Self-taught geek praised for stopping virus spread
A YOUNG computer expert living in an English seaside town was hailed as a hero last night for stopping the huge worldwide cyber ransom attack. Working from his home, the 22-year-old found a critical weakness in the software.
Completely self-taught, he used his technical skills to stop the ransomware spreading further. After announcing what he had done online, he was inundated with praise and thanks.
But last night he tried to play down his heroics. ‘Saying I’ve saved lives is a bit drastic, but I’ve saved a few people a pretty penny,’ he told the Mail on Sunday.
The man is known publicly as Malware Tech, but his public messages on social network Twitter provide a revealing insight into his background. Half-Scottish, one of his parents is a nurse and he was born in 1994. ‘I’m not a graduate, I’m completely selftaught,’ he said. He started working for a ‘private intel threat firm’ based in LA a year ago but still lives and works in England. As the cyber attack known as WannaCrypt wreaked havoc, Malware Tech examined the code behind it. He discovered an unusual reference to a website address that nobody owned, so he purchased the address for £8.30 and pointed it at a ‘sinkhole’ server in Los Angeles. This prevented the spread of the ransomware and prevented it ransoming any new computer.