The man who accidentally saved the NHS from its huge cyber attack has been revealed.

Axar.az reports citing Independent.

Marcus Hutchins is a self-taught computer genius who works in cyber security. The 22-year-old surfer lives with his parents and didn't attend university.

He also managed to save the entire world from one of the most damaging cyber attacks in history. And mostly by accident.

Mr Hutchins was praised over the weekend after it emerged that he had found a "kill switch" in the WannaCry malware that was spreading like wildfire across the internet.

He came across the vulnerability while attempting to understand the malware, which brought hospitals across England to a standstill. He found that it appeared to be referencing a URL at which there wasn't a website – so he bought that URL, as a way of checking how many times the ransomware had installed itself.

It was then that he realised that he could actually kill the ransomware, simply by using that URL.

In doing so, he helped put a stop to an attack that was by then sweeping across the world. It hit huge numbers of computers in almost every country across the world before Mr Hutchins stepped in.