Nobody seems to have given any thought to the victims of the thefts directly attributable to malicious software that Hutchins has admitted writing.
Whether or not he was involved in the creation of Wannacry - I always suspected he was but it seems there's no proof, at least not yet - he's admitted that he's comitted serious crimes.
Yes, his lawyers wrote a nice 'mea culpa' piece for the media which I don't buy for a moment. This was not a one-off mistake. The indictment covers a campaign of criminal activity, sustained over a period of at least a year from July 2014 to July 2015:
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3912524-Kronos-Indictment-R.html
Hutchins should answer for his crimes, like any other criminal. If he's in a position to make any restitution then he should do that too.
I've never directly lost anything to online banking fraud, but I know people who have, and I know that in the long run we're all victims who pay for it through things like increased bank charges, higher prices for goods, higher taxes to pay for law enforcement and the general aggravation of trying to avoid being the next, er, mark.
It's the victims who deserve your sympathy, not Hutchins.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
