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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 live
by hacker_9 9y 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.
- tptacek 9y agoThis doesn't make any sense. It's not how justice works. You can't do one useful thing to excuse a series of grave crimes.
- hacker_9 9y agoOk, so where is the arrests and trials for the people from the NSA, who designed the exploit that was stolen and became a key part of the WannaCry virus? The very same exploit that was used in a bunch of other viruses too, which has stolen tens of thousands of dollars to date?
- shubb 9y agoOccasionally it does in the UK. A man who was videoed appealingly for calm during the London riots was let off I believe an assault charge. The magistrate told him something like 'we're even now '. However this was mitigation at sentencing following a trial.
- literallycancer 9y agoI know this probably isn't what you meant, but it's actually often the case that doing useful things helps people get over the other things you did, see Francis Drake, any number of founders of post-colonial and early 20th century countries, conquistadors/founding fathers/revolutionaries, etc. In short, justice is what most other influential people deem just, not some universal measure of conduct. Those responsible for the firebombing of Dresden never stood trial, because the victims belonged to the losing side. The "scientists" of Unit 731 never stood trial.[1] Only 13 out of 24 directors of IG Farben were found guilty and all were released early.[2] The church effectively killed hundreds of thousands (very conservative guess) by telling people not to use condoms. No one was tried. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731#Surrender_and_immunity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731#Surrender_and_immunit... 2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IG_Farben#IG_Farben_Trial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IG_Farben#IG_Farben_Trial
- user5994461 9y agoAnd he was so effective at stopping the malware because he is himself a malware creator distributing competing malware.
- mattnewton 9y agoAllegedly. Innocent until proven guilty.
- cortesoft 9y agoWhich we will find out if he gets a fair trial, but that doesn't mean he should be able to skip the trial because he helped the NHS.
- vkou 9y agoNo, he should skip the trial because of the chilling effect prosecuting a security researcher who allegedly wrote a banking trojan would have on legitimate security researchers.
- tptacek 9y agoWhat chilling effect would that be? I'm a security researcher, many of my friends are security researchers, none of us sell banking trojans (or write them; they're extremely boring as computer science projects) and none of us have changed what we're working on even a little bit as a result of this case. Frankly, this sounds a lot like what people said during the advent of the Hans Reiser trial. Believe it or not, "security researchers" are just as capable of committing crimes as everyone else is.
- tylersmith 9y agoThe trial is necessary before you can deem him a legitimate security researcher and trojan authors should feel a chilling effect.
- cortesoft 9y agoWhat? So if I am a security researcher, I am allowed to write and sell as much malware as I want, with no consequences? That is absurd.
- corford 9y agoHero is a bit strong. He rashly decided to register a domain name without knowing how the malware would respond to that. By luck it de-activated itself when the domain became active. The malware could just as easily have decided to encrypt the victim's hdd and destroy the key.