I would not be shocked if Defcon moved out of the US.
Arrest of WannaCry researcher sends chill through security community
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Re: Arrest of WannaCry researcher sends chill through security community
#12Realistically, DEF CON should move to the Caribbean. Marcus Hutchins is a British citizen. Extradition before the event was feasible and would have been a far more honorable path than the snatch and grab that transpired. British security experts might insist on Grand Cayman for any further conferences in the Americas.
Maybe Sir Richard Branson could host it on Neckar and stream it live on Virgin.com -- I'm only slightly kidding.
This seems, amusingly, like something I could imagine him actually getting involved with.
Re: Arrest of WannaCry researcher sends chill through security community
#13I wonder if the location of the arrest influenced the prosecutors' decision: "We 'caught' him at a hacker convention where they broke a voting machine!"
Re: Arrest of WannaCry researcher sends chill through security community
#14I hope it goes to trial, and he is not found guilty. Should be a relatively easy case to win.
Re: Arrest of WannaCry researcher sends chill through security community
#15Realistically, DEF CON should move to the Caribbean. Marcus Hutchins is a British citizen. Extradition before the event was feasible and would have been a far more honorable path than the snatch and grab that transpired. British security experts might insist on Grand Cayman for any further conferences in the Americas.
There is apparently going to be a DEF CON event in Beijing. But I'm not sure that will be any better in terms of not going to prison.
Re: Arrest of WannaCry researcher sends chill through security community
#16I hope it goes to trial, and he is not found guilty. Should be a relatively easy case to win.
Based on the information to be found in this article it's not at all clear whether it will be an easy case to win.
Re: Arrest of WannaCry researcher sends chill through security community
#17I've read a few articles but I feel like I'm missing something. What's with the sensational quotes like "I had folks afraid that their own involvement in investigating WannaCry would get them arrested."?
Everything I've read points that he created banking Malware "Kronos" which was sold on various "underground forums" (whatever that means). What's with the WannaCry conspiracies? He wasn't arrested for being a security research, he was arrested for being a malware creator selling malware. Why is this "sending a chill through the security community"?
Re: Arrest of WannaCry researcher sends chill through security community
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
Extradition needn't have come into it. The US authorities could have sent their evidence to the UK police to deal with (assuming the UK police didn't have it to start with). If we want justice to be seen to be done, we shouldn't encourage "forum-shopping" by law-enforcement, letting them bring prosecutions in a country where the defendent will be artificially disadvantaged.
Having said that, if the unidentified co-conspirator is from the US and they're going to be tried together, it wouldn't be so unreasonable.
I am sure the "unidentified co-conspirator" is unidentified because they have a deal to talk and will likely not be charged or has a plea agreement so no trial
Re: Arrest of WannaCry researcher sends chill through security community
#19> The indictment does not say Hutchins designed Kronos or sold Kronos. Rather, it says that he provided computer code to a second party to update Kronos. > Overt Acts in Furtherance of the Conspiracy > a. Defendant MARCUS HUTCHINS created the Kronos malware. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3912524-Kronos-Indic...
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Re: Arrest of WannaCry researcher sends chill through security community
#20If your code is used in an exploit and that is now a punishable crime, maybe next the NSA will be in the hot seat since the code that was used in wanacry was their own. Or perhaps Israel for their effort in Stuxnet.
I hope he takes it to trial and we find out what is really happening here. Pretty suspicious that this happens years after the fact and only weeks after he helped prevent the further spread of wannaCry. WannaCry being created on top of the leaked NSA exploits they held on to instead of responsibly disclosing to Microsoft.