The United States’ Federal Bureau of Investigation on Wednesday arrested a cyber security researcher who had helped neutralise the global “WannaCry” ransomware attack in May. A spokesperson for the US Justice Department said Marcus Hutchins was arrested on unrelated hacking charges from Las Vegas, Reuters reported on Thursday.

The 23-year-old Britain-based malware researcher has been accused of “advertising, distributing and profiting from a malware code known as Kronos that stole online banking credentials and credit card data”. Hutchins took part in the crime between July 2014 and July 2015, according to an indictment filed in a US district court.

In May, the cyber attack had crippled systems worldwide and affected around around 99 countries, including India. While cyber security firm Kaspersky Lab had said that at least 45,000 computers in 74 countries were affected by the “ransomware”, another security firm Avast put the tally at 57,000 systems across 99 countries.