It has been a while since we had an update on the situation of Marcus Hutchins Esq. You may recall that Marcus aka MalwareTech rose to prominence after stopping the WannaCry virus dead in its tracks by simply registering a domain. Skills if ever there were.
Shortly thereafter in August 2017, Marcus had his collar felt by the Feds in the USA whilst returning from a cybersecurity conference. His alleged crime? Well according to the FBI, Mr Hutchins was responsible for creating at least some of the code contained within the Kronos banking trojan. They have proof, they said.
Well, move on nine months and the case has taken a curious turn. Marcus’ defense (for that is how they spell it over there <—-) team are attempting to have a conversation between Marcus and a third party made from within custody in which he appears to admit the exact crime for which he is on trial struck from the prosecution evidence.
Whoops! Apparently the Uber HackMeister was too wasted to understand his rights and had no idea that his call would be recorded. We thought that everyone knew that pretty much all American calls are recorded, not least those made from inside the nick.
So it seems that MalwareTech is in doo doo, he might have done well to listen to the words of another Marcus (Aurelius) when he said ‘Our life is what our thoughts make it’ and kept stumm.
Now before you all start feeling sorry for the man, he has mostly been on house arrest with time for surfing and all other wholesome west coast activities, ironic really that when so many people are trying to get into the states, he can’t leave and has to tough it out on the beach. Who says that (the suspicion of) crime doesn’t pay?
In other news, the very same FBI announced this week that the mass leak of CIA materiel called ‘Vault 7’ by Wikileaks, was nothing other than, wait for it, an internal job! How our gasts were flabbered. Furthermore the long arm of the law has fallen upon an individual by the name of Joshua Adam Schulte.
In the absence of any proof (yet) of the original crime, Mr Schulte is being prosecuted for having indecent images of child abuse on a server for which he is responsible and to which about 100 other people have access. Hmmm.
We wish both Marcus and Joshua the best and look forward to justice being just that. They might be comforted by this line from Maxi Priest’s ‘Marcus’. “Strength and courage pulled many through yeah”, the rest weren’t so lucky.
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