MalwareTech

May 6, 2025·1 hr 7 min·6 clips

MalwareTech registered a random domain and unintentionally stopped the WannaCry ransomware from spreading globally.

Start with the awkward part. The host has been chasing this interview for years: DMs, follow-ups, and a polite brush-off that basically lands as, who are you? Fair enough. Their first face-to-face at DEF CON was not much smoother. The guest hid behind a sign. The host wore a mask. Somehow, that fits. This is not a polished mythmaking interview. It feels more like a strange catch-up after a very loud stretch of life. Then Vegas enters the chat. The guest and his friends book an Airbnb, end up with a massive mansion, rent supercars, and accidentally make it look like one person is loaded. The correction matters. He says the costs were split across about eight to twelve people, which turns the whole thing from fantasy wealth into chaotic group-trip math. Still, the image was ridiculous. Mansion, rented supercars, automatic weapons, Las Vegas. Of course people read it wrong. DEF CON shifts the mood again. WannaCry had happened only about three months earlier, and the guest expected attention, just not that much of it. The hallway at Caesars Palace becomes the whole story. He describes trying to move through shoulder-to-shoulder crowds and getting stopped almost every step. A maybe 100-foot walk takes two hours and fifteen minutes. That sounds less glamorous than trapped. The host understands why the wait mattered. He started the show the year the guest was arrested, then waited eight years while the guest dealt with pressure, interview requests, and the fight around his own life. The clip sets up a long-delayed conversation with someone who needed time before telling it plainly.

As heard by us

A tense, human Darknet Diaries interview about MalwareTech, WannaCry attention, arrest, and the cost of becoming a cyber legend.

MalwareTech plays like a cyber case file with the volume turned down just enough to hear the person inside it. Darknet Diaries frames the episode around a guest Jack had chased for years, and the payoff is less about mythmaking than pressure: post-WannaCry attention, DEF CON…

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Why you'd press play

Eight years of asking, one DEF CON party, and the InfoSec story the host kept waiting to hear.

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