Man in Japan to Serve Prison over PC-virus

July 20, 2011, is the date the District Court of Tokyo sentenced Izumisano, Osaka Prefecture (Japan) based Masato Nakatsuji a man aged 28 years, to 30 months in jail over accusations he destroyed property to develop malicious software, disseminating it across the Web as well as destructing data within contaminated PCs, Yomiuri.co.jp reports, July 21, 2011.

Interestingly, never before has a malware developer within Japan been accused with property damage.

Nonetheless, the ruling from court states that Nakatsuji developed one PC virus named ika-tako meaning squid-octopus that destroyed data via substituting files on the contaminated PC's hard disk with pictures depicting octopuses and squids.

Also, during May-July 2010, Nakatsuji posted files carrying the ika-tako worm on the Internet using peer-to-peer file-sharing application like the Winny program popular in Japan.

Consequently, 3 men from the Japanese prefectures of Kanagawa, Gunma and Hokkaido lost images along with other contents stored on their PCs because graphics of squids and octopuses substituted those images and contents.

Said Masaru Okabe, Presiding Judge of the District Court of Tokyo, it was a clever, well designed offence for disseminating a PC-virus during an overtly lengthy time-span. Yomiuri.co.jp reported this.

However, the defendant's legal advisor raised objections saying that the property destruction charges against Nakatsuji were not valid since there had been no physical destruction on the personal computers' hard drives.

But, the judge contradicted saying that the defendant's behavior indeed led to property destruction since the hard drives of the victims' PCs couldn't restore stored files to their earlier state, while it became hard for adding more files. Mdn.mainichi.jp published this on July 20, 2011.

The judge further stated that Nakatsuji executed the offence when for a same kind of accusation, he was undergoing probation; hence he deserved the sentence. Yomiuri.co.jp reported this.

Earlier during 2008, Nakatsuji was taken into custody after being charged with copyright infringement that resulted in his probation.

Conclusively, according to the security specialists, it becomes clear from Judge Okabe's ruling that Internet crooks in Japan should become alert to the development wherein the Japanese government now criminalizes the act of designing/spreading PC-viruses, online.

Related article: Man Sues and Wins against ISP for Spamming Mail

» SPAMfighter News - 7/29/2011