Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Confessions of Marcus Hutchins, the hacker who stopped the WannaCry attack

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 69 posts

Re: Confessions of Marcus Hutchins, the hacker who stopped the WannaCry attack

#2

Post by rayuela »

Hutchins was busted for committing bank fraud. Him doing one good thing does not absolve him of having committed another crime...he's still a criminal. Rather than protest him being arrested we should advocate for him getting a reduced sentence for having at least done some good.

Re: Confessions of Marcus Hutchins, the hacker who stopped the WannaCry attack

#3

Post by willis936 »

rayuela wrote: post #2

Hutchins was busted for committing bank fraud. Him doing one good thing does not absolve him of having committed another crime...he's still a criminal. Rather than protest him being arrested we should advocate for him getting a reduced sentence for having at least done some good.

Shouldn’t the system be set up to reward the good thing more than the bad thing when possible? If someone is in a position of power from doing bad things, how could you expect them to stop of their own volition?

Re: Confessions of Marcus Hutchins, the hacker who stopped the WannaCry attack

#5

Post by jstanley »

rayuela wrote: post #2

Hutchins was busted for committing bank fraud. Him doing one good thing does not absolve him of having committed another crime...he's still a criminal. Rather than protest him being arrested we should advocate for him getting a reduced sentence for having at least done some good.

> getting a reduced sentence for having at least done some good.

It seems like this is exactly what happened:

> On 26 July, 2019, Hutchins was sentenced to time served and one year of supervised release.

Re: Confessions of Marcus Hutchins, the hacker who stopped the WannaCry attack

#6

Post by jakelaboss »

willis936 wrote: post #3
rayuela wrote: post #2

Hutchins was busted for committing bank fraud. Him doing one good thing does not absolve him of having committed another crime...he's still a criminal. Rather than protest him being arrested we should advocate for him getting a reduced sentence for having at least done some good.

Shouldn’t the system be set up to reward the good thing more than the bad thing when possible? If someone is in a position of power from doing bad things, how could you expect them to stop of their own volition?

A system that rewards the morally 'right' behavior seems ripe for abuse. Should we not set the expectation that one should be 'good' as the base of our society contract?

Re: Confessions of Marcus Hutchins, the hacker who stopped the WannaCry attack

#7

Post by JustFinishedBSG »

willis936 wrote: post #3
rayuela wrote: post #2

Hutchins was busted for committing bank fraud. Him doing one good thing does not absolve him of having committed another crime...he's still a criminal. Rather than protest him being arrested we should advocate for him getting a reduced sentence for having at least done some good.

Shouldn’t the system be set up to reward the good thing more than the bad thing when possible? If someone is in a position of power from doing bad things, how could you expect them to stop of their own volition?

> how could you expect them to stop of their own volition?

The threat of punishment ...?

Your system encourage doing bad things when you are in a position of doing good things.

If I discover a cure for cancer might as well rob a bank and kill my noisy neighbor just before publishing because I'll be pardoned

Re: Confessions of Marcus Hutchins, the hacker who stopped the WannaCry attack

#9

Post by CalChris »

willis936 wrote: post #3
rayuela wrote: post #2

Hutchins was busted for committing bank fraud. Him doing one good thing does not absolve him of having committed another crime...he's still a criminal. Rather than protest him being arrested we should advocate for him getting a reduced sentence for having at least done some good.

Shouldn’t the system be set up to reward the good thing more than the bad thing when possible? If someone is in a position of power from doing bad things, how could you expect them to stop of their own volition?

In a sense, it did. That was taken into consideration at his sentencing. From his Wiki [1]:

  Hutchins was sentenced to time served
  and one year of supervised release.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Hutchins

Re: Confessions of Marcus Hutchins, the hacker who stopped the WannaCry attack

#10

Post by DyslexicAtheist »

pfundstein wrote: post #8

This is a bit over the top. He is not a master hacker who "saved the Internet"; He accidentally neutered WannaCry by registering a domain he found in the binary, which as it turned out, acted as a kill switch.

> He accidentally neutered

he did not "accidentally neuter WannaCry". He stopped WannaCry by registering the kill-switch domain. Nothing accidental about that.

> He is not a master hacker

he is a kid. what makes his experience interesting, and his story worth listening to is that he had first-hand experience with the legal system as a hacker that went too far (because he is/was a kid). that is worth more than the arm-chair analysis of law (by wannabe skript kiddies and theoretical security experts).

Post reply on HN