A British hacker credited with helping to stop the global WannaCry attack has been arrested by the FBI and indicted.
Marcus Hutchins was charged with conspiring to advertise and sell Kronos banking malware, according to court filings.
The case is believed to be unrelated to the WannaCry attack.
Hutchins was detained on Wednesday in Nevada after attending the annual Def Con hacking conference in Las Vegas.
The security website Motherboard, which first reported news of his arrest, said Hutchins was initially held at the Henderson Detention Center in Nevada and then moved to another facility.
An FCO spokesman said: « We are in touch with local authorities in Las Vegas following reports of a British man being arrested. »
The malware researcher gained attention for detecting a « kill switch » that effectively disabled the WannaCry worm in May.
The attack struck the NHS and infected hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide, causing disruption at car factories, hospitals, shops and schools in more than 150 countries.
The software, called WannaCry or Wanna Decryptor, exploited a vulnerability in the Windows operating system.
It allowed the malware to automatically spread across networks, so it can quickly infect large numbers of machines at the same organisation.
More follows…
