Crowdfunding for arrested discoverer WannaCry kill switch is being sabotaged

Malicious individuals use stolen credit card information to donate to the crowdfunding campaign set up to cover MalwareTech’s legal costs. The lawyer who set up the campaign therefore says that it must stop it.

Attorney Tor Ekeland tells BuzzFeed that “some idiot” is using a script that makes donations with stolen or fraudulent credit card numbers. Those numbers are recognized as such by the payment provider where Ekeland set up the campaign. According to Ekeland, he should therefore stop the campaign and find out which payments are real and which are fraudulent. Therefore, it is now unclear how much money has been raised. However, at the time of writing, the donation page is still online.

The crowdfunding campaign was set up by the lawyer himself because GoFundMe did not want to host the campaign, because it would not meet the conditions of the website. It is also possible to give support by donating bitcoin. At the time of writing, 0.75 bitcoin has been transferred. More than a week ago, at least $12,000 had already been donated via the Lawpay page. Ekeland tells BuzzFeed he will stick to the agreement to pay the costs for the defense of security researcher Marcus Hutchins and donate any money left over to civil rights organization EFF.

On Monday, Hutchins appeared in court, where he pleaded not guilty to six charges. He is accused of creating, managing and distributing the Kronos banking malware. That is why he was arrested by the FBI in early August. Hutchins is awaiting trial in Los Angeles, where he works for Kryptos Logic. The researcher has been analyzing malware for some time and became known for discovering a ‘kill switch’ in the WannaCry ransomware.