Marcus Hutchins, known as @MalwareTechBlog on Twitter, has been spared jail over malware charges.
British-born Hutchins, who was credited with creating a “kill switch” for WannaCry, was arrested in 2017 in Las Vegas after attending DEF CON. He has remained in the US on bail ever since.
Back in April, he pleaded guilty to two charges of making malware, admitting to building two programs named Kronos and UPAS Kit.
US district judge Joseph Peter Stadtmueller said that the malware Hutchins helped stop was much more damaging than the two programs he created, and sentenced him to time served with a year of supervised release.
After his sentencing Hutchins tweeted a message of thanks
https://twitter.com/MalwareTechBlog/status/1154820057085677570
Hutchins had faced a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. He is now free to return to the UK.
Note: The previous version of this article was removed. It was the opinion of one person and doesn’t reflect the usual style of Naked Security and Sophos.
Mahhn
I wonder if he will go to DefCon next week before he leaves (yes seriously). I’ll buy him a beer if I see him.
Ian
Just curious, why would you possible want to buy a convicted malware author who tried to steal people’s life savings a beer?
Mahhn
Because when he gets home, he will likely go to jail and not get any. It is know that there are lots victims of his malware in the UK. If there were here also, he might not have got off so easy.
Ian
That’s too bad. I get that he claims he’s trying to turn his life around but he should still have to pay for the crimes he already committed. Then he can work on being a good guy. This ruling basically says “yes he did bad stuff but then he did good stuff so we are going to ignore that bad stuff” and that doesn’t seem right to me.
HutchyPrisonJellyTime
I guess Deviant Ollam will have to find someone else for Tara now
Nunya
He was only sorry AFTER he got caught.
I hope his career is over. I mean, why not? Infosec twitter is OBSESSED with ruining other peoples careers who said something they didnt like yet did nothing illegal.
He is no different than anyone in the Russian mafia.