14 DAY TRIAL // The security researcher who put a stop to the spread of WannaCry last week was rewarded a $10,000 bug bounty by HackerOne.
The white hat hacker MalwareTech, who has since been identified after British tabloids doxxed him although he clearly wanted to keep his anonymity, managed to put a stop to the spread of this ransomware by registering a jibberish domain found deep within the malware's code, effectively triggering the kill switch.
Of course, since then other variants have popped up in the wild, some with kill switches of their own, others without. Nonetheless, the worst wave had been stopped. In total, around 220,000 computers have been infected in over 150 countries across the world. Even more such infections were blocked by security solutions.
HackerOne, the bug bounty platform used by dozens of companies and even the US Army, has decided it would be a good idea to reward MalwareTech for the great service he did the world.
The young white hat doesn't plan to keep the money. According to his tweets, he plans to split the money between to-be-decided charities and purchasing infosec-based books to give to students who can't afford them.
By education I mean I plan to purchase infosec based book to give to students who cannot afford them themsleves. — MalwareTech (@MalwareTechBlog) May 15, 2017
Everyone loves pizza
The very same tabloids that managed to dig up the hacker's name (as well as every other personal detail about him that no one needs to know because it's not relevant to how he managed to save hundreds of thousands of devices from being infected by ransomware) also found out he apparently likes pizza. Therefore, Just Eat pizza chain joined the PR bandwagon and announced they were supplying him with free pizza for a year.
"Guy pretty much saves the world - Just Eat give him free pizza for a year. A sentence so beautiful it brings a tear to one’s eye. Modern-day superheroes travel by surfboard, are really good at stopping nasty computer hackers, and LOVE pizza from Just Eat restaurants. That’s now a fact. So old superheroes, step aside and have a long old look in the mirror," folks over at Just Eat wrote in a blog post.