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!
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
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
"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.
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.
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.
Maybe he'll get laid because of this!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
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."
It acts like it more often than not.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
You have not read his blog. He specializes in malware tracking, detection, new malware analysis and the like. He has been writing nearly two articles per month since he was 18 and has a job doing similar work at 22. A very accomplished, if a bit overspecialized, young man precisely in the field we are discussing.
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
Have you consider that perhaps the malware was more than a few bytes in length and different people started looking at different parts?
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
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.
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.
"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.
In kuzb's defense. Nazi is that guys "I don't have a valid argument" response. Happens a lot.
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)
Or maybe we can give him a little credit and assume he saw some sort of "if host exists, return, else infect".
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.
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."
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