Ikatako Virus Replaces Victims' Files With Pictures of Squid

An anonymous reader writes "Ikatako is a virus that spreads through Japanese P2P network Winny, aided by the pirates' lack of wit. Once downloaded and run, the virus sends their data to a central server and replaces it with cephalopod and cnidarian imagery. Japanese hacker (and virus creator) Masato Nakatsuji thought he wouldn't be arrested this time. However, Japanese police considered the files in Japanese pirates' hard drives to be more important than his manga depictions of octopods and other tentacled fauna."

Re:"Your Rights Online"?

[deep9x]

Well, in TFA it mentions it's the first time that anyone in Japan has been charged with "property destruction" for creating a virus. Also, he created all the images himself so he wouldn't get arrested for copyright infringement. Of course, none of this is made clear in the summary, and I think the latter point is more him being a smartass. I thought maybe he was a mis-aimed White Hat, but no, he was collecting the data from the affected computers as well and just hanging onto it. So, I guess that falls under YRO as a general "computer law" issue, but it's kind of an unnecessary story since it's just a guy getting arrested for making a virus. How original!

Re:Ikatako Virus Replaces Victims' Files With Pict

[theTerribleRobbo]

If it's any consolation, "ikatako" is a word that's just "squid" and "octopus" stuck together (ika / tako).

Re:A "hardened" computer hacker?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it's because of his past acts?

Yup, it's because of his past act. Source is asahi.com; they're okay with a presumption of guilt on the second act. It's part of how Japan works. They have an absurdly high conviction rate. Basically, the police interrogate the hell out of the accused, keeping no records and no time limit, until they have a considerable 'confession' to hand to the prosecution, who presents it to a judge, sans jury.

Admittedly they're /finally/ starting to bitch for recording interrogations, and they've introduced a /type/ of jury system last year, but the system has never been, and is not yet, anything like one based on the English legal system. So you've always got to wonder what really happened. Maybe this one is as weird as it appears, and maybe it's not, and maybe it's even weirder. You don't know; welcome to Japan. Which means this story gets an extra helping of bizarro-flavor when you read it.

Re:cephalopod hentai?

[prash_n_rao]

Some might call it "art". Check this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dream_of_the_Fisherman's_Wife [wikipedia.org]

FYI: Strange sense of pursuit of quality

[tai]

Just FYI, many Japanese geeks were amazed by his "pursuit of quality" shown on Japanese TV news.

[WASTE OF TALENT] On "Excessive quality" of Ika-Tako virus's illustration and character background.
- http://zeark969.blog38.fc2.com/blog-entry-1668.html [fc2.com]

Althrough page above is in Japanese, I'd say a picture is worth a thousand words.

Re:Submitter: stop trying to be clever

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks, I am glad you enjoyed it. Next time blame the editors who chose to publish it without my witty title... ... and the sentence explaining that he was charged with destruction of "property".

What's amazing about this case is that the "victims" were actually violating the Japanese law by downloading copyrighted files, while Nakatsuji is not, but the Police has something against "virus" writers and uses whatever unconstitutional and illegal way they can think of to bust them.

Other than that, the summary depicts the facts pretty well, and got itself published. Next time I might get a Pulitzer.

RTFA.

Signed,
Anonymous Coward.