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As Prosecutors Submit Evidence, WannaCry Hero's Legal Fund Returns All Donations (buzzfeed.com)
An anonymous reader quote BuzzFeed:
The vast majority of money raised to pay for the legal defense of beloved British cybersecurity researcher Marcus Hutchins was donated with stolen or fake credit card numbers, and all donations, including legitimate ones, will be returned, the manager of the defense fund says. Lawyer Tor Ekeland, who managed the fund, said at least $150,000 of the money collected came from fraudulent sources, and that the prevalence of fraudulent donations effectively voided the entire fundraiser. He said he'd been able to identify only about $4,900 in legitimate donations, but that he couldn't be certain even of those. "I don't want to take the risk, so I just refunded everything," he said.
Two days later, Hutchins posted the following on Twitter. "When sellouts are talking shit about the 'infosec community' remember that someone I'd never met flew to Vegas to pay $30K cash for my bail."
Hutchins is facing up to 40 years in prison, and at first was only allowed to leave his residence for four hours each week. Thursday a judge lifted some restrictions so that Hutchins is now allowed to travel to Milwaukee, where his employer is located. According to Bloomberg, government prosecutors complain Hutchins now "has too much freedom while awaiting trial and may skip the country."
Clickthrough for a list of the evidence government prosecutors submitted to the court this week.
According to BankInfoSecurity, this is the evidence submitted by government prosecutors.
Two days later, Hutchins posted the following on Twitter. "When sellouts are talking shit about the 'infosec community' remember that someone I'd never met flew to Vegas to pay $30K cash for my bail."
Hutchins is facing up to 40 years in prison, and at first was only allowed to leave his residence for four hours each week. Thursday a judge lifted some restrictions so that Hutchins is now allowed to travel to Milwaukee, where his employer is located. According to Bloomberg, government prosecutors complain Hutchins now "has too much freedom while awaiting trial and may skip the country."
Clickthrough for a list of the evidence government prosecutors submitted to the court this week.
According to BankInfoSecurity, this is the evidence submitted by government prosecutors.
- Statements made by Hutchins after he was arrested.
- A CD containing two audio recordings from a county jail in Nevada where he was apparently detained by the FBI.
- 150 pages of Jabber chats between the defendant and an individual.
- Business records from Apple, Google and Yahoo.
- Statements (350 pages) by the defendant from another internet forum, which were seized by the government in another district.
- Three to four samples of malware.
- A search warrant executed on a third party, which may contain some privileged information.
Hutchins' attorneys have requested 45-60 days to review evidence, and on October 13 both attorneys will then give the judge a proposed schedule for the actual trial.
This wouldn't happen with Bitcoin, no rollbacks, just cold hard money.
This is what happens when gunfire is normal.
In my country, there's a good chance you'd end up on the news for discharging a firearm like that. Certainly everybody in earshot would be calling the police, and most of them would then be looking for the shooter, even if just out of their windows.
This is much more to do with becoming acclimatised to being in a country where any idiot can own a gun and fire it, than anything to do with the police.
The saddest thing abouth the whole situation is that in the majority of cases getting 40 years in a federal prison vs walking free is matter of how big your bank account is.
Or in this case, who you piss off. Chances are Wannacry was a state-sponsored attack (probably by our own nation) to cause a distraction from politics, it failed because a vigilante decided to poke at it and stumbled upon a weakness to stop it. That kind of thing doesn't go unpunished (Hell, they probably used the stolen cards to donate to his legal defense in order to make it look worse on him,) and the guy probably still has no idea why. It's practically straight out of Clockwork Orange.