Marcus Hutchins pleads not guilty in US

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-40923065

by 0xbadf00d • 9 years ago

59 46 9 years ago

bbc.co.uk

DKnoll• 9 years ago

This headline is editorialised. Some basic OSINT will show he also sold a banking trojan previously, which is what he is facing charges for.

willstrafach4• 9 years ago

That is an allegation which has not been proven without a doubt.

The headline, while complimentary, makes sense as it identifies him in the way most folks would recognize.

tptacek8• 9 years ago

That's the point of a criminal conspiracy: to be well-known only for positive things, and for nobody to know about your involvement in negative things.

Obviously, he hasn't been found guilty of anything, and you're entitled to argue that the evidence suggests he isn't. The only thing you can't reasonably argue is what you've tried to argue here, which is that we should judge this person by what they were previously best known for.

dang• 9 years ago

Ok, we can take the epithet out of the title. We do that anyway when someone's name is well known to the HN community.

hacker_93• 9 years ago

You would think the UK government would help him out here, given what he did for us.

tptacek8• 9 years ago

You think the UK government would intervene to stop the trial of someone accused of operating a conspiracy to spread banking trojans? Why?

hacker_93• 9 years ago

Because he's not just a 'someone', he's a hero for stopping the disgusting attack on the NHS and letting doctors and nurses get on with their job of saving lives.

brudgers6• 9 years ago

In the US prosecutorial system, conspiracy charges are regularly used as a tool to leverage and encourage plea negotiations because conspiracy is so broad and allows for broad interpretations of seemingly innocuous actions and trifling intents. As I've said elsewhere, this smells more like an intelligence operation than a criminal investigation.

Reading through the indictment [1], the conspiracy charge does not allege anything that isn't in the other charges. For the most part, the other charges allege "knowledge" that the software can be used for some purpose rather than actual use.

[1] https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/986606/downlo...

syshum• 9 years ago

Because he is a UK citizen, and the US Legal system corrupt, twisted and self aggrandizing.

PrimHelios2• 9 years ago

Because that indictment was bare-bones and bullshit. I may be wrong here (and part of me hopes that I am), but this entire thing smells like the US flexing its power. Marcus gets picked up by the Feds, disappears without anybody knowing where he is for several days, and then suddenly we get an indictment with almost nothing in it claiming he wrote and sold Khronos based on some IRC logs? That just smells fishy to me.

zwerdlds• 9 years ago

The question of whether he is guilty of this particular crime is what this particular trial is about.

Concessions regarding past behavior are usually saved for the sentencing portion of the trial.

balls187• 9 years ago

I would guess the UK government is going to work with US officials to ensure he has a fair trial.

Not everyone in the US gets that luxury, but given the strong relationship between our two nations, I feel reasonably confident that Mr. Hutchins will receive as fair of a trial as anyone.

brudgers6• 9 years ago

It would not surprise me if the UK government was using the US justice system as a tool to align Mr. Hutchins' interests more closely with those of its security and intelligence organs. To me, the story has unfolded smelling of a human asset acquisition operation.

The Anglo-US intelligence communities have a young talented individual on a spit over a slow fire. Odds are, he will be easy to turn. The UK isn't expending political capital on extracting him from his predicament. That doesn't mean that its functionaries don't care. It suggests that what they care about is providing Hutchins with future opportunities to serve the state.

tptacek8• 9 years ago

Or, maybe the guy was just involved, perhaps peripherally and by accident or perhaps directly and culpably, in a banking trojan scheme.

thephyber• 9 years ago

Does anyone have a technical breakdown of what code he admits to have written? TIA

I'm late to the party and most of the articles I've seen so far focus more on the person and WannaCry as opposed to the 2013-2014 aspect.

armada651• 9 years ago

Apparently it's about this code: https://www.malwaretech.com/2015/01/inline-hooking-for-progr...

This is function hooking code. It's useful when you need to change the behaviour of an application, by redirecting a function call to your own function.

Like any piece of code it has both legitimate and nefarious uses. However, function hooking is very basic stuff.

Anyone who has ever tried to learn how things work under the hood will have written function hooking code before.

lawnchair_larry• 9 years ago

What's your source on that being the code in question?

Marcus Hutchins pleads not guilty in US

Related Stories