Whiz kid gets credit for foiling cyber attack

PARIS: 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 cyber attack.

The young cyber security 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.