Kansas City infoZine News – First Virus Writer Arrested in Japan; Breaching Copyright – USA This is rich. Kind of like getting Al Capone for income tax evasion rather than murder.
SophosLabs, Sophos’s global network of virus, spyware and spam analysis centers, has reminded businesses to defend their networks from malware attack, following the first ever arrest by Japanese authorities of a virus writer.
Police in Kyoto have arrested three men, who are said to have been involved in a plot to infect users of the P2P file-sharing network Winny with a Trojan horse that displayed images of a popular anime characters while wiping music and movie files. The malware, which has been dubbed Harada in media reports, is believed to be related to the Pirlames Trojan horse which Sophos reported intercepting in Japan last year.
According to Japanese media reports, the three men have admitted their involvement in the crime. One of the men is said to have written the malware, while the other two are believed to have distributed the malicious code via Winny.
“It isn’t illegal to write viruses in Japan, so the author of the Trojan horse has been arrested for breaching copyright because he used cartoon graphics without permission in his malware…
I don’t get why they would want to erase music and videos off of people’s drives. Did they believe in copyright?
I’m guessing they were goons hired by the RIAA?
I don’t give a damn why they want to do what they do. All I want is for them to die. For real, not in a virtual or metaphysical sense. This should be a global capital offense. Virus and malware writers should be sentenced to the blue screen of death!
OK, I’m beginning to change my opinion on capitol punishment. This is a case that probably deserves it.
#3, #4 – I agree. Virus and malware writers and spammers are a perfect argument for the use of nukes. Hit ’em from orbit just to be sure.