Slashdot Mirror
UK Tabloids Doxxed the 'Hero' Hacker Who Stopped a Global Cyberattack (theoutline.com)
The UK-based security researcher, who "accidentally" halted the spread of the ransomware Wanna Decryptor over the weekend, has been doxxed by UK tabloids. From a report: [...] Journalists have published his name against his will, bringing him unwanted attention and sending a signal to privacy-sensitive researchers that no good deed goes unpunished. The researcher, writing under the username MalwareTechBlog, published a blog post on his personal site with findings about the virus, explaining how it was stopped and what would have to be done to prevent it from coming back. News outlets, including the Daily Mail, The Guardian, and CNN called the anonymous researcher a hero. The researcher was initially responsive to press inquiries. He told reporters that he was 22, lived in the south of England with his parents, and worked for an L.A. security firm. However, he told The Guardian that he wanted to remain anonymous "because it just doesn't make sense to give out my personal information, obviously we're working against bad guys and they're not going to be happy about this." It took about a day for UK papers, including The Mail, The Sun, The Telegraph, and The Mirror, to suss out the researcher's name and publish photos of him, show up at his house, and track down his friends and associates for interviews. "It's caused a fair bit of stress," he told Forbes. "I don't want fame."
How many of those papers are owned by Rupert Murdoch?
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
They don't care what gets in their way as long as it leads to a "juicy story" and will ruin every life in the way to get it. Reporters, well anyone employed at these garbage "papers" are vile disgusting people.
It isn't really "fake news" as Orange Jesus would say, just garbage news.
The press will continue to lament how they are perceived negatively in spite of them being the real heroes of every story they report.
Those tabloids are a sore on humanity but we must remember, they exist because it works, because people fall for the clickbait. Tackle the cause not the symptom.
In Capitalist US, the commerce controls the Government.
Not you, UK tabloids. But the /. editor who removed the guy's name from the summary. The issue at stake is newsworthy to Slashdot reader, but at the end, the name of the person isn't.
Are you dense? Legitimate news sources protected his name. It's the tabloids that went after him.
Liberals respect privacy, by the way. You're thinking of the far right that respects money over human rights.
You realize tabloids are not news outlets, correct? I find your post hate filled and derogatory towards a specific political leaning. Which may explain your inability to differentiate news from fake news.
Good press: Exposing bad actors in a conspiracy that are trying to remain anonymous.
Bad press: Exposing an accidental good actor that specifically asked to remain anonymous so he could do his work.
This was like outing a police officer's name and address after he nails a low-level gang leader. It could get very messy for this 22 year old online. Hacked social media accounts, DDOSed any personally managed online resources (web servers, etc.). And that's if it's a low-level script kiddie type trying to make some cash - and not some more malevolent group.
Celebrity isn't what you want in that line of work...
for all you know his mom has cancer and he's staying home to help with her medical care, you insensitive clod!
I'm posting this comment anonymously just because it felt appropriate given the context. ;)
This needs upvoting
The UK press are twats.
Security Researchers have had death threats and setups, like having hard drugs posted to their house shortly followed by a tip off to plod and all manner of other nasty things.
Sadly it's not just Murdoch's sewerage - the other papers are just as bad.
Why can't women be like Hedy Lamarr - beautiful, talented and inventors of frequency-hopping spread-spectrum techn
How long before we find out that this 'researcher' is a former member of the clan that unleashed this hot garbage to the world, but left over some petty dispute so invoked the back door already known to him.
I find it hard to believe that Symantec and especially Kaspersky didn't find this 'kill switch' before this guy (allegedly) did.
Liberal? You mean the Daily Mail, the Telegraph, and the Sun? Those paragons a the liberal ideology?? (hint, I am being a tad bit sarcastic here).
Think this might go a bit beyond progressive/conservative ideology.
Might have more to do with Britain's complete and utter lack of respect of personal privacy. Sorry Brit's you let it happen after the IRA attacks, camera's everywhere, and now the idea of an expectation of privacy is a myth in your country.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
I personally don't want to live in a country without a free press. Good luck to you, chap
Reductive vitriol like this accomplishes nothing. There is a world of difference between sleazy tabloids and the serious journalism, you can't use the actions of one to judge the other. Your comment makes as much sense as using the fact someone coded the virus as a reason to talk shit about CS majors and programming in general.
How are tabloids not media outlets?
Stop equating media with news. News is a subset of the media, but then again so are the Simpsons.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
because of this against-his-will exposure, he should crowdsource funds to sue the tabloids.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Never mind, I had a senior moment reading the GP's comment.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
He lives in London. If you want to pay £20k a year in rent alone be my guest. Any sane person would stay home longer until you can get a deposit on a house (which in London will be £50k downpayment at an absolute minimum).
Side-note: Judging by these currency signs, looks like Slashdot still can't figure out text encoding. If only they knew some programmers who could help them out...
Yes, I don't know.
It doesn't matter. Small minds discuss people.
Discuss the event. Any event. The infection event: IoT is shit/not shit. The morality event: Vigilante hero or illegal haxor criminal. The exposure event: Shitty journalism is blah blah blah.
Who gives a fuck about whether Some Guy is living with his mom, unless he's being proposed or considered somehow, making his viability the event.
> This needs upvoting
Does this look like reddit?
I apologize ahead of time if you're just being sarcastic ... whoosh on me. But, liberals most certainly do NOT respect privacy. They would love nothing less than to post running lists of personal info for legal gun owners, advocates of traditional marriage, pro-lifers and creationists in teaching positions, engineering and/or with PhDs.
> Liberals respect privacy, by the way.
Like when Gawker had a Hulk Hogan sex tape, that kind of privacy?
Neither liberals nor conservatives give a shit about privacy. We've had unopposed Democrats in Congress, and currently have unopposed Republicans. No one passed any fucking privacy laws. No one is going to.
I might be mistaken, but... This is a worm right? With no control over rate of infection, right? Meaning it's an exponential growth process. Meaning it should have hit its saturation in no time. Like an hour or so. Meaning that by the time that dude pulled the plug, the party was mostly over anyway...
Heros don't wear underpants.
Well said. The Groaniad is like totally full of stuff like that.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
This needs downvoting
Those tabloids put him in harms way in the middle of a global IT security crisis.
When (not if) people in hospitals die because of this computer hacking, they should sue those tabloids, for putting a target on his head, and on the head of anyone who wanted to help. Bet your arse that there are others who will "just duck" to not get doxxed by those sorts of papers.
I think anyone whose life he saved, should help crowdfund a lawsuit against the papers that did this.
If he ends up being executed for this, I think that the state (is it UK?) should sue those agencies on his behalf for his wrongful death in which they were enabling participants.
Is mass media all owned and narrative controlled by the same two or three elite oligarchs really "a free press?" The answer is that no, it is something else entirely.
The Telegraph does, indeed, amount to little more than a tabloid at this point.
"One nation under CCTV" - Banksy
Yeah, Brits think that "private" means porn.
Liberals respect privacy and free speech? They used to.
Of course if your point is that progressives and SJWs and Antifa are not liberal then you're correct. I would agree with that. Progressivism is antithetical to liberalism.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
The Sun. The Daily Mail. The Mirror. The only thing worse than them is Julius Streicher's Der Stürmer. Thanks, Rupert Murdoch, for the daily garbage.
Sounds like he didn't try too hard to hide his identity, depending on the newspapers' integrity to maintain privacy. Maybe instead he should have taken at least some of the steps Anonymous does to keep their identity secret.
It's inevitable that the perps will go after him. Hopefully it'll only be electronic, not physical. He may never be able to own a computer or a credit card again.
The sad thing is that this will serve, at least in part, to discourage other private white hats from publishing their works.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
If he wanted to remain anonymous then why give them his name?
If all you are known as is a tweeter handle, then there's no way they could doxx him.
I'm going to guess he wanted some people to know who he was so he could brag about it. The only safe secret is the one that no one knows.
You are talking about a fringe element. This is similar to the fringe element on the other side that doxes and then sometimes attack doctors and clinics where abortions are performed. Both sides have nut cases.
Liberals respect privacy and free speech? They used to.
Of course if your point is that progressives and SJWs and Antifa are not liberal then you're correct. I would agree with that. Progressivism is antithetical to liberalism.
They used to? They still do.
The problem you have is associating anything you don't like or supposedly "anti-freedom" with liberal, or progressive or anything else. Look up the definition of a liberal. If the person claims they respect privacy, and then don't do so ... guess what, you can't call them a liberal. The shoe needs to fit.
Is it time to doxx everyone involved in the production and distribution of these tabloids?
Alternatively, you could boycott anything printed by the same company that prints the tabloids so that they drop the tabloids as client. (printing presses are expensive)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Wow, clearly you remained anonymous in order to protect yourself from the embarrassment of having people tell you how monumentally stupid you sound.
1. Not everything that a centrist sees as unpalatable gets blamed on the left, we point a lot of fingers at the right too, and then have fucktards like yourself bleating out "Far right" and "Far left", depending on which vantage point said fucktard has. Not realizing they're the one's being radical and shouting at a centrist.
2. Go look up the "Appeal to definition fallacy" as you might not say such retarded shit if you knew what that was.
I don't know if you've noticed the recent emergence of fascists running around, trying to destroy free speech, getting people fired and shouting "FASCIST" at anyone who disagrees with them, all while being completely blind to the irony of the situation. That is exactly how you sound.
> arrow for green text.
Does this look like 4chan?
Maybe he'll get laid because of this!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Most of the tabloids mentioned are owned by Murdock's conservative news corp, it seems your bile should be directed at your own.
It's not the first time they've done something like this; see Princess Diana in the gym. The British newspaper industry has given itself the privilege of publishing whatever it wants (except page 3 girls). The hypocrisy being, they get their stories by bribing authorities to spy for them (eg. the phone-hacking scandal) under the pretense of an anonymous tip. They're so well protected, only long-term celebrities like Jude Law and Sienna Miller get to sue them.
Yes he is. He used the present indicative second person singular of a verb meaning to extract by rinsing or soaking instead of the plural of a noun meaning a parasitic animal which paradoxically has some medical uses.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Correct. Like most politics it is a distraction. Literally the circus component of the modern bread-and-circuses act. People are so busy arguing over what liberals/conservatives are/do/want/think/plan that they don't see what's going on right under their noses.
Let this serve as a lesson. Those who think they are heroes and go around stopping so called cyber crime will be found and exposed to the world.
What he did was stupid and honestly he deserves far worse.
Tldr; Don't be a hero, you will suffer for it.
It acts like it more often than not.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Different AC to above, just want to point out thats precisely how you currently sound. Authoritarians like keeping lists regardless of left/right leanings. By definition liberals would be opposite to that position, so not entirely sure where you think you're coming from (bear in mind liberal has distinctly different meanings in the US and UK)
False equivalence in this case. Mainstream national press is hardly "fringe", all but one of the papers mentioned as releasing the info were right wing (The Mirror being the left wing exception)
Look at the track records.
Conservatives are avoiding meaningful discussion of this matter with their Strong and Stable propaganda.
Liberal Democrats are running on the platform of repealing the Snooper's Charter, passed by the Tory Parliament.
Even the Graud is bashing the surveillance capitalists every single day these days.
And you tell me it's the liberals who hate privacy?
Absolutely. We don't need yet another reason to talk shit about CS majors and programming in general.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
Damn it. Am I shadowbanned again?
Heres me thinking the virus was coded to help people encrypt the files on the hard drive and therefore increase system security.
Ah, so they were all right wing, except that they weren't. Got it.
Fuck Banksy.
Both of the major parties in the US are quite authoritarian so, insofar as you associate liberal or conservative with Democrats or Republicans, you're talking about authoritarians either way. You can argue about how authoritarian the average members are relative to each other, but they're all up there. Both parties have talked about making lists and the members of both parties are just a couple steps away from donning their brown shirts.
The UK is even more authoritarian than the US, so this whole thing is smelling like a No True Scotsman argument.
Mitt armory wears magic underwear!
The Murdoch press is the biggest selling set of papers in the UK - they tell our idiots how to vote.
For some twisted reason the most powerful man in Btitain is an Australian pornographer.
This perpetual motion machine Lisa made is a joke, it just keeps getting faster and faster. - Homer
If some citizens were to dox the editord, camp out on their lawns, shout constant inane questions and mob you, your friends an family at every opportunity.
It would be 'in the public interest' for these schmucks to get a taste of their own. But that wouldnt stop the mass arrests.
This perpetual motion machine Lisa made is a joke, it just keeps getting faster and faster. - Homer
No, not of those who doxxed him.
Of the white-hat. There's no way he won't be tried under the CFAA for this.
Like they said; no good deed goes unpunished, and this was a very good deed indeed.
...and so the Republican party was formed. These guys put the lickin in Republickin
It's hard to take someone's ideas seriously when they feel the need to pepper them with phrases like "libtard". If you want to be taken seriously then act that way.
You have absolutely no clue about the UK at all, do you?
Seriously though, a 22 year old wouldn't be that hard to google these days, even the ones that work in security. It's sad. Just say no to Facefarm.
All but one are nazi rags. It's kinda weird that you find that hard to get your head around. Are you stupid or something?
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
It's bizarre isn't it. Shame Murdoch won't just do the decent thing and fucking die. Long overdue.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
"Free press"? lol. Bless. Propaganda rags designed to further the goals of Murdoch and Dacre. And that is literally all they are for.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
"Liberals respect privacy, by the way"
Of course they do. They have the most to hide. Just ask the DNC.
"Everyone who disagrees with me is a Nazi".
Your logic is so sound, how could anyone argue?
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
maybe the journalists and editors of those papers should be Doxxed as well....
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
i don;t think he said that but here's a possible reference for his opinion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
The UK Tabloids are scum and they have a long history of it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Does this look like 4chan?
> sign has been used for quotations in e-mails and newsgroups long before 4chan happened.
The Telegraph is not a tabloid, so if the summary is accurate, then it wasn't just tabloids.
Yeah try to blame liberals but The Mail, The Sun, The Telegraph, and The Mirror are all right wing papers. Fck the Mail even used to support Hitler.
In kuzb's defense. Nazi is that guys "I don't have a valid argument" response. Happens a lot.
Oh I Know, just like how all the conservatives I know would love nothing less but to slap on an armband and start goose-stepping in the streets shouting "Sieg Heil!".....
Go fuck yourself.
That is what happens when the right wingers take over the media.
The Mirror and The Sun being liberal made my day.
I'm pretty sure a LOT of people supported Hitler before the corpses piled up.
Well they do describe themselves as news.
Sun title on website is:
News, sport, celebrities and gossip | The Sunpapers.
Daily Mail and Mirror news sections.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/index.html
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/
The Telegraph, come on that is a newspaper, Telegraph is one the worlds oldest newspapers still in circulation. the Times is older but still.
The news is just what is current, what is new, hence news.
Trying to make a claim on something due to legitimacy is subjective. The tabloid's name comes from the printing size, newspaper were either broadsheet or tabloid and it is down to dimensions, not whether it is fake news or not.
yes, i realise that but i think it can't be levelled at this one
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
yea, pretty much
I moved to the US to get away from the shithole that people like you were making, so I think I have a pretty good clue.
The thing about democratically established authoritarian countries is that the people there like what they're building so they don't see a problem with it. You're thinking that authoritarianism is bad, so this place that I think is good must not be authoritarian.
If he is working as a security researcher, then crackers will often target those people, because those people are targetting them.
This is why the police, prosecutors, judges get doxxed, and their personal details traded, because it protects the crackers more. The more confusion in the enforcement sector, the better for the crackers. If a judge has had to defend themselves against having false digital evidence planted on them, then it changes the bar for what is acceptable evidence and sets it much higher.
And governments doxx people all the time, loads of people don't consent to the government holding information on them, and yet governments do.
If you want power over someone you need to know about them and have leverage over them. I think crackers do actually treat what they do as a form of warfare, and war is dirty. If you are up against a pyramid style force, there's loads you can target to affect the pyramid to your advantage, they have lines of command, crackers don't, crackers act more like independent mercenary guerilla fighters.
Security researchers should probably study incident response as the first step of security research, people good at cracking probably do, of course they are looking for the chinks in that to exploit. Incident response is like a bit of armour for the security researcher, and it takes into account how society is set up. So there is a process of how to deal with different incidents, and I don't think he followed it at all.
The press doxxes, that's what it does, that what the news is, good incident response knows this. Journalist often protect their sources because they want exclusivity, and if people think they will be protected they are more likely to talk to the press, it is not because the press thinks doxxing is wrong. The press isn't some paragon of virtue, it is just a group of people trying to make money over what has happened, the chances are they are staffed by people who are more selfish than altruistic, but that is a symptom of how society is governed really.
That's exactly it. He'll point to any policy endorsed by any of those publications and start screaming "Nazi!" without actually giving us any white supremacy examples. White nationalism is not the same thing as white supremacy. In fact, many of these Nationalists are trying to use the system as it was intended to voice their own opposition to various things that are happening in the country. In most cases this is carried out it a peaceful and orderly fashion by exercising their constitutional rights and freedoms. You don't have to agree with their ideas but trying to paint "Nazi" all over them with broad undiscriminating strokes in an attempt to silence reasonable debate via lies and ad hominem attacks is ironically a far more fascist policy than anything the Nationalists have suggested.
They need to stop doing that. It doesn't make anything better. It makes things far worse.
Instead, if you think you have a point worth considering present it in a calm and reasonable manner to be considered and criticized by other people. Screaming louder than your opposition is not how you should try to win arguments.
Americans should have the right to protect their own culture. Nobody is suggesting that segregation, social subclasses, or extermination as ways to do this. Non-whites are welcome to be a part of American culture, but they have to stop trying to destroy and subjugate it first.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
"Leaches" is the present indicative *third* person singular, I think you'll find. Let's get our pedantry right here.
As already noted, the line between "exposing bad guys" and "doxxing good guys" is very faint. I vote for people before principles.
Indeed, that's correct. Unless you is Popeye, or a C programmer.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
you can legitimately call Rupert Murdoch many things, most of them VERY unflattering.
Pornographer is however pushing it.
Daddy Murdoch however was very respected as a Journalist
Do you thing Antifa respects freedom of speech and privacy? They call me, a hard-core Libertarian, "fascist" and then proclaim that it's OK to do violence to fascists. What are fascists to Antifa? Evidently it's almost any position that they disagree.
Are progressives for freedom of speech? Or are they turning into Red Guard fanatics spewing vile on anyone that doesn't toe the party line?
Communism is antithetical to liberalism, to the respect of the individual and individual freedoms.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
The delusions of right wingers are so hilarious, I wouldn't mind them keeping them if they weren't so dangerous.