WannaCry slayer, malware author Marcus Hutchins won’t go to prison

Enlarge / Hutchins, right, walks to court with his lawyers in 2017. (credit: Joshua Lott/Getty Images)

British security expert and onetime malware developer Marcus Hutchins has been sentenced to supervised released for one year, he announced in a Friday tweet.

Hutchins became famous in the security world in 2017 after he inadvertently stopped the WannaCry malware outbreak by registering a domain name that served as a kill switch for the sophisticated malware. Yet Hutchins, now in his mid-20s, had a dark past, having developed banking malware earlier in his life. At the time of his WannaCry efforts, Hutchins was already under investigation by US authorities for creating two banking trojans in the early 2010s.

Hutchins was arrested in August 2017 during a visit to the United States. He initially denied any role in developing malware. However, during his detention, federal prosecutors intercepted phone conversations in which he reportedly made incriminating statements. Under pressure from the authorities, Hutchins eventually came clean, admitting to his role in developing the malware. He took a plea deal in April.

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