WannaCry hero Hutchins now officially a convicted cybercriminal
Credit:
Sophos
Remember the reluctant WannaCry hero?
WannaCry was ransomware that made big headlines in mid-2017 for two important reasons.
First, it was a true computer worm, or virus, that automatically propagated itself to the next guy, and the next guy…
…and so on, meaning that although it drew attention to itself very quickly, it was nevertheless able to spread far and fast. SophosLabs estimated that it infected 200,000 computers in 150 countries within four days of showing up in the wild. Second, WannaCry’s spreading mechanism used a exploit code known as ETERNALBLUE, allegedly developed by the US National Security Agency for secret intelligence-gathering purposes.
