Japanese Police Arrest Two Over Theft of Lineage Accounts

Police in Japan, who suspect two individuals, have arrested them on charges that they allegedly seized virtual items and characters that gamers playing Lineage II, an extremely well-known Internet game, used.

It appears, the duo, 39-year-old Kaori Tanaka, who is Adachi Ward's (Tokyo) processor of medical claims, and 29-year-old Yu Nishimura, an employee of a company in Kawasaki, breached the Unauthorized Computer Access Law.

Both apparently promoted a website, which presented free tools to Lineage players for stimulating the combat features of the online characters the latter used. But the site was a phishing site that apparently presented a program, which falsely enhanced virtual characters' capabilities in Lineage II.

However, the program in reality was a PC-Trojan, which filched usernames and passwords of Lineage accounts following which the Trojan transmitted the details to Nishimura.

Moreover, while executing their malicious act, both suspects offered game goods -shields and swords -they discovered within the hijacked Lineage II accounts for sale at specific markets that dealt with real money.

With that, they apparently earned 1m Yen (about $12,000) during April-June 2010 after victimizing more than 100 victims, police suspect.

Police also emphasize that the program the duo developed carried a PC virus, which escaped detection by security applications.

Furthermore, together with the crimes related to illegal PC access that bear up to 1 year of jail as well as a maximum fine of 500,000 Yens as punishment, Tanaka and Nishimura may as well end up with accusations against them such as obstructing business that carries a maximum sentence of 3 years in prison, Police say.

Also according to them, if the second accusation is proved against Tanaka and Nishimura, the country will have a case, like-never-before, that has to do with unlawful access to PC.

Eventually, this is not a unique instance wherein cyber-criminals have robbed online gamers. During July 2009, in Australia, one virtual bank's CEO through one sci-fi Internet game filched "kredits" amounting 200bn that he spent to get an actual home, while in Britain, police detained a young man, aged 23, because he allegedly stole from characters in another well-known online game 'Runescape.

Related article: Japanese Text Editor Reports Flaw

» SPAMfighter News - 12/11/2010