A hardened computer hacker has been arrested on suspicion of writing a computer virus that systematically destroys all the files on victims' PCs and replaces them with homemade manga images of squid, octopuses and sea urchins. Between 20,000 and 50,000 computers may have been infected.
Masato Nakatsuji, 27, of Izumisano, Osaka Prefecture, was quoted as telling police: "I wanted to see how much my computer programming skills had improved since the last time I was arrested."
He was collared in 2008 for violating copyright laws by creating a computer virus that replaced data with an anime image. He was serving a suspended sentence for that offense when he was arrested in connection with the latest virus.
Police are investigating him on suspicion of property destruction, because the new virus destroyed files on victims' computers. It is the first time that Tokyo's Metropolitan Police Department has arrested someone for property destruction in connection with disseminating a computer virus. According to the police, since the virus makes it impossible to retrieve the original computer files, those files have effectively been destroyed.
Specialist police officers handling high-tech crimes said Nakatsuji is suspected of writing the Ikatako (squid-octopus) virus, which was distributed using the Winny file-sharing program in May, disguised as a file for anime songs.
A 37-year-old unemployed man downloaded the file to his computer and it became infected with the Ikatako virus. About 11,000 of the 64,000 files on his computer were destroyed. When he realized something was wrong, the man pulled the plug on his computer, preventing further damage.
The virus gets its name because infected files are replaced by manga images of a squid, octopus or sea urchin. If the virus is left unchecked, all files in the computer's hard disk become infected. When a user tries to open a file, all the individual can access is a manga image of a marine invertebrate.
The virus also is programmed to transmit all the files in the infected computer to a server believed to have been set up by Nakatsuji. Police said he had told them that the server contained data from about 50,000 people. Police have confirmed the existence of data for about 20,000 computer users.
Nakatsuji, who was convicted for violating copyrights in his previous case, was quoted as telling police he felt he would not be arrested again because he had created the manga images for Ikatako himself, therefore avoiding a violation of the copyright law.
(asahi)
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