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.
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...
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.
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?
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"Everyone who disagrees with me is a Nazi".
Your logic is so sound, how could anyone argue?
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
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.