» Making plea:
He’s accused of creating malware
A British cybersecurity expert credited with stopping the WannaCry ransomware attack pleads not guilty in federal court.
A British cyber security expert widely credited with stopping the international WannaCry ransomware attack in May appeared Monday in federal court in Milwaukee on charges he created a different kind of malware aimed at bank customers in 2014 and 2015.
Marcus Hutchins, 23, was arrested Aug. 2 in Las Vegas, where he had been attending Def Con, a computer security conference, based on a six-count federal indictment from Wisconsin’s Eastern District that had been under seal.
He entered a not guilty plea Monday.
After the brief hearing, one of his attorneys called Hutchins a hero.
“He is going to vigorously defend himself against these charges, and when the evidence comes to light, we are confident he will be fully vindicated,” said Marcia Hofmann , a San Francisco digital rights attorney who is also special counsel to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit group focused on civil rights in the digital context.
The British and cybertech news media have been closely following the case, which involves a so far unnamed co-conspirator and has many wondering why such a crime was charged out of Wisconsin.
Hutchins was released last week on $30,000 bail and conditions he surrender his passport and remain in a Nevada half-way house until his travel to Milwaukee for a hearing that initially had been scheduled for last week.
Now, U.S. Magistrate Judge William Duffin decided Monday, Hutchins can travel within the United States and could be released from GPS monitoring once federal pretrial services in Los Angeles is comfortable with his living and working arrangements.
His second attorney, Brian Klein, is based in Los Angeles as is Krytos Logis, a cyber security firm where Hutchins has been employed.
Though Hutchins was granted access to computers and the internet while out on bail, prosecutors did insist on one restriction — that he not be allowed access to the “WannaCry sinkhole,” a collection of all the internet traffic related to the ransomware that struck, among other large targets, the British national health care system.
The July indictment charges Hutchins with creating a “Trojan,” a piece of malware called Kronos designed to sneak onto computers then find and divert owners’ bank account information. He and another person, whose identity has been redacted from the indictment, are accused of conspiring to sell Kronos to cyber criminals.
The unnamed co-defendant, possibly a Wisconsin resident given the case was investigated here, is charged with showing how to use Kronos on a YouTube video, advertising Kronos and selling it once for $2,000 in digital currency, according to the indictment.
Before he became an instant international celebrity after stopping the WannaCry virus, Hutchins was best known online by the name MalwareTech.
A reporter for Motherboard, the publication that broke the story of Hutchins’ arrest, said the news shocked the cyber safety community.
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai said even before the WannaCry incident, Hutchins’ MalwareTech persona was a wellknown and respected “white hat” researcher — someone who tries to use digital code to protect the internet and its users.
Franceschi-Bicchierai said there are no strong theories within the cyber ware community as to the identity of the co-conspirator. He also said the underlying crime alleged in the indictment — creation and distribution of a banking Trojan — is a rather run-of-the-mill offense in the realm of cyber crime.
Duffin set an Oct. 23 trial date, but Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Chmelar said he expects to designate the case as complex, which would push all deadlines in the case back several months.