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I directly knew, from being in some IRC channels he and I frequented ages ago, that he was absolutely guilty of the charge. But I also knew (as far as I could t
by meowface 8y ago
I directly knew, from being in some IRC channels he and I frequented ages ago, that he was absolutely guilty of the charge. But I also knew (as far as I could tell) that he genuinely turned over a new leaf a while ago, left that life behind, and is trying to do good now. This is a pretty common story for whitehats; many of their hats weren't quite so white in their pasts, whether people around them are aware or not.
People make mistakes, and people can change. Don't feel too bad for contributing to his defense. He fucked up and is trying to make up for the damage he caused by sincerely helping people.
- zeraphim 8y agoThe plea agreement he signed says he was still selling malware until late 2015 at least, and was arrested in 2017. If he had turned over a new leaf, it wasnt for very long. I think he probably had stopped, but only because of the attention he received from the strings wannacry.exe thing.
- phaus 8y agoSo you're saying he continued to commit crimes up until May 2017? That's when WannaCry happened. His fame came on pretty quickly after that and it didn't take long for him to get arrested. Edit: The source code leaked at some point so its hard to tell when he stopped selling it based on available malware samples. New variants were detected at least as late as 2018. He was accused of selling it in 2014 and 2015 though, so there's a decent chance that he stopped a couple of years before his arrest.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- MRD85 8y agoMy general rule for judging adults is to not judge them based on dumb decisions they made while young. Young adults do dumb things and will continue to do so. If you're still doing dumb things 30+ then that's probably you.