Happy days watching swells* to global saviour. Been a busy weekend!
You have probably all seen the news now – over 100 countries thrown into crisis by a ransomeware hack, NHS Trusts shutting down computer systems. Global telecommunications businesses are hit, Russian banks, you name it. It was carnage, an unprecedented cyber apocalypse. Well a 22-year old surfer from North Devon solved a problem the KGB, FBI and the rest of the world couldn’t.
We aren’t going name him, save for his Twitter handle of @MalWareTech, as it would add to his current woes of journalists camping out in his garden, tracking down friends and such. The man is busy trying save the world!
The only details you need for now is that he loves surfing, pizza (media making massive deal about this so I dare say he’s got a free table for life at Pizza Express? Huh?) and judging by his tweets he’s pretty funny.
For those surfers GCSEs etc it’s also interesting to note he is also self taught “I’m not a graduate,” he told one reporter. “I had planned to go to university but ended up getting offered a job in security a year prior, so I took it. I’m completely self-taught so in hindsight university would probably not have been worth the time or money.”
None of his friends actually knew what he did for a living/hobby.
So hats off to @MalWareTech . Hopefully someone will throw him a surf trip and some gear as reward. Going to be interesting to see where his life goes from here…
We shall leave you with some funny tweets describing his developing situation…
*The original twitter shot was RT from Luke Gartside
