Porn Virus Blackmails Victims Over "Copyright Violation"

FishRep writes with this excerpt from the BBC: "A new type of malware infects PCs using file-share sites and publishes the user's net history on a public website before demanding a fee for its removal. The Japanese trojan virus installs itself on computers using a popular file-share service called Winni, used by up to 200m people. It targets those downloading illegal copies of games in the Hentai genre, an explicit form of anime. Website Yomiuri claims that 5,500 people have so far admitted to being infected. The virus, known as Kenzero, is being monitored by web security firm Trend Micro in Japan. Masquerading as a game installation screen, it requests the PC owner's personal details. It then takes screengrabs of the user's web history and publishes it online in their name, before sending an e-mail or pop-up screen demanding a credit card payment of 1,500 yen (£10) to 'settle your violation of copyright law' and remove the webpage."

Comments

Sounds like a plan

[BadAnalogyGuy]

So you call the cops, transfer the money, find out who is on the other end, have the law and credit card agencies come down hard on them.

Unless you're afraid of getting caught with porn...

Re:Sounds like a plan

[OrwellianLurker]

Unless you're afraid of getting caught with porn...

If that porn involves schoolgirls getting raped by tentacles, then yes, I would be afraid of getting caught.

Re:Sounds like a plan

[Thanshin]

If that porn involves schoolgirls getting raped by tentacles, then yes, I would be afraid of getting caught.

Drawings of schoolgirls getting raped.

There's quite a difference. Unless you think they abduct actual schoolgirls, and octopuses, to use them as models.

Re:Sounds like a plan

[thijsh]

That's the problem with blackmail, it only works if you're uptight about it... I don't give a fuck. I have hentai in my porn collection, my girlfriend and friends know and I even shared it on the LAN at the student dorm (and kept stats that said over 50% of people accessed it)... Hentai is just like masturbation: everyone is doing it but no-one want's to admit it. With the difference that masturbation is a gift for life and hentai is just a thing to check out once in your life. :-)

Posting non-AC for obvious reasons.

Re:Sounds like a plan

[OrwellianLurker]

If that porn involves schoolgirls getting raped by tentacles, then yes, I would be afraid of getting caught.

Drawings of schoolgirls getting raped.

There's quite a difference. Unless you think they abduct actual schoolgirls, and octopuses, to use them as models.

I have no problem with the drawings. All I am saying is that if I had that kind of pornography in my web history, I would not want the public to see it attached to my name.

Re:Sounds like a plan

[Edmund Blackadder]

When will we grow beyond these terrible false negative stereotypes of the fine ancient tradition tentacle porn?

In the more refined examples of tentacle art (as this is its proper name), the school girls are graduate school girls and the tentacle monsters take the girls to dinner and drinks and spend many hours making clever observational comments in trendy downtown winebars before they even brave to invite them to their lair. And even then they fumble nervously around with their tentacles for at least an hour before the exasperated girl finally says that she is really tired from writing her thesis and if she could be brutally violated simultaneously in all possible ways with enormous tentacles, that would really be a change of pace.

Re:Sounds like a plan

[spectrokid]

Unless you think they abduct actual schoolgirls, and octopuses, to use them as models.

How about the calamari I can buy in the fish shop down the street. Will that do?

Re:Sounds like a plan

[Anonymous Coward]

This depends on your jurisdiction. Many countries, such as Australia, believe that a real child is abused when someone draws a picture of a child being abused, or something. The new UK Act which came into force earlier this month also criminalises certain depictions by adult actresses, though I'm not sure it goes as far as criminalising hentai... must read up further.

Anyway, every guy who has browsed porn has at least one pic in his cache/deleted which "might" be underage and for which he has no proof otherwise. Even if he only visits pron sites where records are kept of the age of models, the file fragment on his drive may not contain any information about that source. The only way not to be charged with a CP violation is to not get yourself in a position where an authority can read your drive and wants to charge you with something, even when you know that you have never looked for CP and have never knowingly downloaded it.

Re:Sounds like a plan

[takev]

I think at some point, when all the young generation is grown up. They expect to see compromising pictures on your facebook. And if you don't have those they wont trust you and you won't get a job.

Re:Sounds like a plan

[kobiashi maru]

no Australian xkcd for minors, then?

Re:Sounds like a plan

[beakerMeep]

Says the AC :)

Re:Sounds like a plan

[not flu]

But everybody is a hypocrite so you'd get condemned for it all the same. On a subject like this you'd get condemned for not condemning it! Most people would at least make a token effort to condemn it publicly just for show, even if they fapped to the same schoolgirls getting tentacled themselves.

Re:Sounds like a plan

[Anonymous Coward]

>Everybody views porn or has viewed porn before, so nobody can condemn you for it without being a hypocrite themselves.

See, that's where you're mistaken. A hypocrite is someone who condemns you while thinking the same condemnation does not apply to them.

I have done many wrong things over the course of my life; my having done them doesn't make them any less wrong, nor does the fact that I've done them and condemn them make me a hypocrite. If you show your horrible scars to your kids and tell them "don't play with fire," does that make you a hypocrite? No, it makes you a responsible person. If I look back at the game I cracked and released to the scene but now say "Don't pirate games; it steals income from developers," it's because I've grown older and wiser and have a little more perspective now.

Re:Sounds like a plan

[martas]

first you'd have to be stupid enough to give your real name to a pirated porn game...

Re:Sounds like a plan

[zwei2stein]

This is not how it really works. Being yourself is cool if you are applying to 'being yourself' company, but it is not always going to the the case. Easy going does not mean anything to most companies.

See, everyone was young, had drunked adventures and whatnot and propably smoked pot for quite a long time. 60's generation being example.

Do you think that now that they are all adults and propably in big-chair positions that they would be cool with you smoke pot on workplace? They should be enlightened about it and whatnot, they did it themselves, but no, not a chance. Hell, generation of "free love" is suprisingly uptight about sex life of their children.

Getting rid of that facebook image of you and twocolored vomit is the same thing like getting rid of ridiculous t-shirt or getting haircut or getting email address with your real name in front of @ instead of nick or using proper spelling in cover letter. Rite of passage.

Simply put, company hiring you is not hiring teenager on those photos. If you project that image, do not be suprised if you end up on bottom of pile. It is just as if you showed up on interview dressed unapropriatelly.

Trust me, "You are not your photos on facebook".

Re:Sounds like a plan

[Nadaka]

The problem with not caring if other people know about it is this: in a lot of places, having viewed hentai drawings is sufficient for criminal charges, prison time and in a few rare cases execution.

Re:Sounds like a plan

[MRe_nl]

http://tluthman.home.mindspring.com/dragoncon2004/images/DSCN6529-dc2004.JPG

Re:Sounds like a plan

[clone53421]

Wait, what?

Your basic premise fails on two major points:

A) Drawings are not real. Pinocchio is not a real boy, and a girl in a hentai drawing is not a child. A lot of people would spontaneously vomit if they personally witnessed a grisly death but could watch a film chock-full of grisly death and dismemberment because it’s done with stage magic and special effects and it’s just a picture anyway – not real.

B) Watching something means you are attracted to it (or, being attracted to bad stuff is bad). And I could name dozens of movies depicting bad stuff that, according to your logic, should be illegal to watch. A Clockwork Orange, for one.

Just because I watched a violent movie and enjoyed it doesn’t mean I’d enjoy having a ringside seat (behind bullet-proof glass, I suppose) at the next school shooting. And just because I watched the violent movie and enjoyed it doesn’t mean I’d enjoy acting it out.

Re:Sounds like a plan

[Kreigaffe]

Are you kidding? They're way ahead of us. The Australian government has actually taken the stance that unless you have big full breasts, you're not a real woman. I mean, damn. Setting up a whole generation of girls to feel inadequate. Nice.

Re:Sounds like a plan

[Kreigaffe]

In the future, tentacle monsters will sparkle.

Re:Sounds like a plan

[Minwee]

Drawings of schoolgirls getting raped.
There's quite a difference.

You might want to tell a few more people about that.

Re:Sounds like a plan

[LatencyKills]

Won't someone think of the octopi?!?

Re:Sounds like a plan

[Anonymous Coward]

Pinocchio is not a real boy

You obviously didn't watch all the way to the end of the film.

Re:Sounds like a plan

[TheRaven64]

For a real laugh, look for publicity photographs of Sen. Conroy, the politician pushing hardest for this law with his wife. Notice anything? Yup, she has quite small breasts meaning, according to the Senator's own words, that anyone attracted to her is a pedophile.

The MAFIAA

[OrwellianLurker]

The MAFIAA must be wondering why they haven't done this yet. "Why waste time in the courts guys? Why lobby politicians?"

Re:The MAFIAA

[pookemon]

Which assumes that the person being blackmailed reports it. And when has "Legal Means" every bothered the MAFIAA?

Re:The MAFIAA

[Dachannien]

Actually, there's some malware going around that presents a popup purporting to be from the content industry that demands $400 in restitution for having copyright-infringing movies and music on your computer. No, it's not the ??AA actually doing it, but it's certainly possible.

http://msmvps.com/blogs/spywaresucks/archive/2010/04/12/1763297.aspx

Re:Well, it could be worse, right?

[shawb]

By the way, anyone care to tell me why slashdot was showing May 2009 articles earlier?

The editors figured out an easier way to get those all important dupes up?

Winny?

[EdZ]

Serves them right for using an ancient system (two generations behind, PD (Perfect Dark) via Share). This is like someone still using, say, Kazaa, and being surprised there are fake files.

Wonderful reporting courtesy of the BBC

[onlysolution]

I think it's worth pointing that Winni is used almost exclusively by the Japanese, and the total population of Japan is still under 130 million people. The 200 million users figure put forth by the BBC is a bad guess at best, and completely made up at worst. I honestly expected better from the BBS, but why should factual reporting get in the way of writing a sensational story?

Re:Wonderful reporting courtesy of the BBC

[Anonymous Coward]

And I get a kick out of things like this popping up when I keep having to hear from japaenese about how viruses/malware is a foreigner-only thing the same way copyright infringement is a foreigner-only thing. So this kind of thing is like a double slap in their face. :)

Not that they'd ever let themselves believe a single japanese person was involved in any of this.

I have a guess

[jonaskoelker]

Ethics.

I couldn't help but think...

[augi01]

Why would an individual care if his or her browsing history is published online? Employers search for Facebook or MySpace pages because these websites contain 'proof' that you behaved in some way or other (e.g. pictures), but a browsing history does not tell them anything other than, 'a computer in my household has accessed these websites at some point in time or other,' which can easily be accounted for by explaining that a friend pranked your machine with tentacle porn or your children were just really excited about Misty and Ash Ketchum.

But perhaps the real emphasis is on the following, from TFA:

A fictitious organization calling itself the ICPP copyright foundation issues threatening pop-ups and letters after a virus searches the computer hard drive for illegal content - regardless of whether it actually finds anything. It offers a "pretrial settlement" fine of $400 (£258) payable by credit card, and warns of costly court cases and even jail sentences if the victim ignores the notice.

If an individual knows that they have illegal content on their HDD they might opt for this $400.00 settlement, as past copyright infringement suits have cost individuals hefty sums.

Re:Perfectly legal way of doing business!

[WrongSizeGlass]

Sounds like iTunes....

iTunes says "you're about to download a song from one of the artists we profit from and for $10 we'll remember everything about you"

Public Website?

[pgn674]

For this to be effective, either the website needs to be highly publicized, or the user needs to be stupid or in a panic. I can't image the web site can be publicly known for long; virus maintainers have a hard enough time keeping their private servers up and connectable. I wonder how the virus convinces the user that their private history will be available for peruse by their friends/coworkers/family?

Symantec has some information on the virus: HTTP Infostealer Kenzero Activity: Attack Signature - Symantec Corp.

Re:Public Website?

[John Hasler]

> ...the user needs to be stupid or in a panic.

So it only works on 90% of users.

Re:Fact check

[slickepott]

I was actually wondering about this. Is it 200 millipeople or 200 meters of people?

It doesn't publish your name and details

[petes_PoV]

... it publishes the name and details that you enter in it's registration form.

This sounds to me like a possible double-blackmail, where a person deliberately downloads this trojan, enters the personal details of someone they dislike, or wish to extract money from, or wants to get fired and threatens or actually hits . Off goes the personal info, plus whatever you've seeded that machine's surfing history with.

The obvious third phase is then fro the victim to sue the publishing website for defamation, since you (the blackmailer) never entered that information and have been misrepresented by the false information they've published. Sounds like everybody wins!

I'm surprised this hasn't happened sooner.

[log0n]

What with our puritanical (US) society and all.. blackmail husbands to keep their pr0n habits away from wives, non-catholic clergy against the church, teachers, lawyers, etc.

Doesn't even need to be illegal porn.. just porn in general. How many people dread a significant other finding out what really gets them off?