This photograph, posed as an illustration on May 12, 2017, shows the website of the NHS: East and North Hertfordshire notifying users of a problem in its network taken outside the Department of Health in London. The unprecedented global ransomware cyberattack has hit more than 200,000 victims in more than 150 countries, Europol executive director Rob Wainwright said May 14, 2017. Britain's state-run National Health Service was affected by the attack. / AFP PHOTO / Daniel LEAL-OLIVAS
They are called white hats – the good guys in the Wild West of the Internet – and they ride to the rescue as in the case of the 22-year-old British expert who helped stop the WannaCry cyberattack.
The young cybersecurity researcher, known only by his Twitter handle @MalwareTechBlog, says he found a weakness by chance that allowed slowing the spread of WannaCry, a type of malware called ransomware that encrypts files on an infected computer and demands money to unlock them.
