Marcus Hutchins was coerced into admitting to cyber charges, his lawyers claim.

Hutchins sleep-deprived and intoxicated at the time of his arrest, claim his lawyers.

Lawyers for Marcus Hutchins, the malware researcher who stopped the WannaCry global cyber attack but was subsequently arrested by the FBI on his return from a security conference, claim that investigators coerced him into confessing.

Hailed as a hero for chancing on a kill switch for the ransomware that had wreaked havoc over several days in May - particularly to unpatched PCs across the NHS IT estate - he was arrested in August by the FBI, who claims that he was behind the Kronos banking Trojan. 

He was arrested at Las Vegas's McCarran International Airport in August and charged with the offences as he tried to return to the UK from the Black Hat and Def Con security conferences. 

However, his legal team claim that the authorities have mishandled his case.

They have filed a motion demanding that the FBI hand over withheld evidence. They also claim that Hutchins was intoxicated, sleep deprived and coerced into making a confession.

According to his lawyers, the government hasn't denied that it kept Hutchins under surveillance before making the arrest. However, they claim, they haven't handed over the evidence, as required by law. 

By Nicholas Fearn.

Full story at Computing.