Security researcher who found kill-switch for WannaCry and stayed anonymous gets doxxed by tabloids - Sensationalist Headlines

[quote]Last Friday, the UK-based security researcher stopped the WannaCry ransomware in its tracks thanks to an ingenious bit of technological trickery, thus preventing more machines from getting infected. We owe him a massive debt of gratitude. Enter the British tabloid press, which late last night doxxed the man behind MalwareTech for literally no apparent reason. And I don’t use the term ‘doxxed’ lightly. They pored through his online footprint until they eventually had enough evidence to identify someone who literally didn’t want to be identified. From what I can tell, the Daily Telegraph was the first publication to share his name, although other festering sphincters of bad journalism — namely The Sun, The Mirror, and The Daily Mail — weren’t far behind. I’m not going to link to their piece, because fuck them.[/quote] Source: [url]https://thenextweb.com/insider/2017/05/15/doxing-hero-stopped-wannacry-irresponsible-dumb/[/url] [media]https://twitter.com/MalwareTechBlog/status/863809742312964098[/media] [media]https://twitter.com/MalwareTechBlog/status/863649452963356672[/media] [media]https://twitter.com/MalwareTechBlog/status/864010372038225920[/media]

Man I fucking hate tabloids. Too bad nobody targets them in cyber attacks.

"Journalists"

This kind of thing should be illegal Or perhaps not but at least individual protections should be updated to the information age

[QUOTE=Talishmar;52235182]This kind of thing should be illegal[/QUOTE] It's a little hard to do that when people post literally everything about themselves on the internet more to the point websites ask everything about the person aswell.

would it be possible for this guy to sue?

[QUOTE=Griffster26;52235224]would it be possible for this guy to sue?[/QUOTE] Maybe defamation, atleast some sort of civil case? Given the recent track record of tabloids and gossip sites getting their shit kicked in (see Hulk Hogan & Gawker), I'd wager that this guy has a good chance of getting them shut down. Any judge/jury with a lick of sense (and decency) would be behind this guy all the way for what he did.

What do they even accomplish with this? why not let him have his privacy and refer to him with the name he already uses in public on the internet. Good job fucking with the guy after he helped everyone.

This is fucking disgusting. The Daily Fail can't die fast enough.

Fucking dumbass. Do they have any idea what the hell they have done? Now,im concerned about this guy safety

Good fucking luck getting anyone to help out next time something like this happens!

[QUOTE=Handsome Matt;52235238]This guy doesn't post anything personal though, this is just tabloids being straight up creepy - they even showed up at his house asking for interviews.[/QUOTE] That's the thing, Making it illegal you've gotta make a clear and defined law that straight up says tracking someone down that called you out on a comment is illegal but only if they haven't posted the information on a publicly such as facebook. Which of course even then you've got crawlers that straight up just rip the information from facebook regardless of settings that makes that a waste of time.

[QUOTE=scratch (nl);52235248]What do they even accomplish with this? why not let him have his privacy and refer to him with the name he already uses in public on the internet. Good job fucking with the guy after he helped everyone.[/QUOTE] A minor "scoop" with no regards to consequences to other people.

[QUOTE=scratch (nl);52235248]What do they even accomplish with this? why not let him have his privacy and refer to him with the name he already uses in public on the internet. Good job fucking with the guy after he helped everyone.[/QUOTE] When it comes to tabloids, getting sweet juicy content that attracts attention is their 'business model'. Respecting an individual's privacy doesn't provide that. Paparazzi are the extreme result of this.

[QUOTE=Sims_doc;52235262]That's the thing, Making it illegal you've gotta make a clear and defined law that straight up says tracking someone down that called you out on a comment is illegal but only if they haven't posted the information on a publicly such as facebook[/QUOTE] You could word it like "Publishing personally identifying information that has not been purposely made public by the individual, or in such a way that links their identity to a pseudonym" Basically makes doxxing in any form illegal, unless they've personally chosen to identify themselves

[media]https://twitter.com/MalwareTechBlog/status/864465819048308736[/media] Atleast he got free pizza for a year

like if I were the guy who created the malware, I'd have expected it to get snuffed eventually. By this point, I probably would have made more than what I expected from it, with how widespread it got I'd probably respect the malware dude enough for figuring out my mess that I'd legit go after the twit who scooped him for the tabloids

[QUOTE=dai;52235565]like if I were the guy who created the malware, I'd have expected it to get snuffed eventually. By this point, I probably would have made more than what I expected from it, with how widespread it got I'd probably respect the malware dude enough for figuring out my mess that I'd legit go after the twit who scooped him for the tabloids[/QUOTE] ...Are you the guy? Please do so. We don't like the UK Papers.

I can't wait till all tabloids die. They're awful. This made me really angry! :angry:

[QUOTE=Reflex F.N.;52235793]I can't wait till all tabloids die. They're awful. This made me really angry! :angry:[/QUOTE] As long as people keep reading them, they never will.

[QUOTE=dai;52235565]like if I were the guy who created the malware, I'd have expected it to get snuffed eventually. By this point, I probably would have made more than what I expected from it, with how widespread it got I'd probably respect the malware dude enough for figuring out my mess that I'd legit go after the twit who scooped him for the tabloids[/QUOTE] I think that the killswitch was probably meant to be found to prevent it from infecting millions of computers and landing the dev on various most wanted lists.

[QUOTE=phygon;52236850]I think that the killswitch was probably meant to be found to prevent it from infecting millions of computers and [B]landing the dev on various most wanted lists[/B].[/QUOTE] The fact it crippled the healthcare sector in the UK already did that. That's a no-go zone even in the theater of real war.

[QUOTE=Van-man;52236875]The fact it crippled the healthcare sector in the UK already did that. That's a no-go zone even in the theater of real war.[/QUOTE] As far as I can tell it wasn't really designed to target them. They just had a really, really, really shitty outdated network that was somehow not hit by any other virus even though it was a MASSIVE soft target. UK's healthcare sector crippled itself.

[QUOTE=phygon;52236888]As far as I can tell it wasn't really designed to target them. They just had a really, really, really shitty outdated network that was somehow not hit by any other virus even though it was a MASSIVE soft target. UK's healthcare sector crippled itself.[/QUOTE] Healthcare sectors uses a lot of outdated or old software, most of which probably have funny flaws or bugs that prevents them for running smoothly on anything but the operating system they were designed for. Or were originally DOS based and 32bit XP seems to be the last windows OS with near flawless native DOS support. And don't go into "oh they should've gotten new software" territory, because every time any healthcare sector tries that, it's usually a buggy moneydrain the first few years. And that's most likely not happening, especially not with a healthcare sector like the UK's that's been cut to the bone financially by a retarded government.

[QUOTE=Van-man;52237001]Healthcare sectors uses a lot of outdated or old software, most of which probably have funny flaws or bugs that prevents them for running smoothly on anything but the operating system they were designed for. Or were originally DOS based and 32bit XP seems to be the last windows OS with near flawless native DOS support. And don't go into "oh they should've gotten new software" territory, because everything any healthcare sector tries that, it's usually a buggy moneydrain the first few years. And that's most likely not happening, especially not with a healthcare sector like the UK's that's been cut to the bone financially by a retarded government.[/QUOTE] If they couldn't get new software then it should not have been online. Period. It's like having a house with no walls.

Holy shit, do they [I]want[/I] this guy to get fucking murdered? I cannot wrap my head around this.

[QUOTE=phygon;52236850]I think that the killswitch was probably meant to be found to prevent it from infecting millions of computers and landing the dev on various most wanted lists.[/QUOTE] current working theory from infosec researchers is that the killswitch was meant to block sandbox observation. some sandbox environments will resolve every dns request to localhost even if a real dns server would reply with NXDOMAIN. if the random hardcoded string resolved, it was likely in a research sandbox and then shuts down to avoid further analysis

It's only okay when journalists dox people

[QUOTE=LordCrypto;52237265]current working theory from infosec researchers is that the killswitch was meant to block sandbox observation. some sandbox environments will resolve every dns request to localhost even if a real dns server would reply with NXDOMAIN. if the random hardcoded string resolved, it was likely in a research sandbox and then shuts down to avoid further analysis[/QUOTE] If that were the case, is there any reason that they wouldn't make it check for an invalid domain that wouldn't be possible to actually register?

[QUOTE=ElectricSquid;52235174]Man I fucking hate tabloids. Too bad nobody targets them in cyber attacks.[/QUOTE] That's because in almost every instance where doxxing has occurred for political reasons like #gamergate, [I]journalists[/I] and their friends have been the ones doing it.