The Surfer Who Saved the Internet

By age fourteen, he'd joined a basic hacking forum centered around chaos on MSN Messenger, the once-ubiquitous instant messaging service.

There, kids swapped code like other kids traded Pokémon cards.

Worms disguised as images.

Keyloggers wrapped in innocent-looking apps.

At first, Marcus didn’t understand what half of it did.

But he was curious.

Curious enough to write his own password stealer — code that could extract login credentials from Internet Explorer’s autofill feature, decrypting them and saving them for future mischief.

He shared it with the forum.

They were impressed.

He felt seen -- and this was only the beginning.

This is the story of Marcus Hutchins.