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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."
Screw Japan, free cephalopods!
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
squid pro quo
oh dear lord...
If one of the motivations for such people to hack others computers is to prove how smart they are, this is epic fail.
Perhaps we need to just take the micky out people like this so at least younger kids don't see hacking others computers as a very smart thing to do.
Nakatsuji a hacker? Nah, cut, sued, gee - what a surprise.
The quality of this alleged cephalopod manga is clearly relevant to how serious a crime this is. We need to see these pictures before we can make a judgment.
Sorry, but how is this a YRO issue?
All I really wanted from TFA was a picture of the squid.
I guess this could be the squid in question
Yeah ok, that's an octopus. Haven't started on my first coffee of the day yet.
Can you imagine the shock when you open your porn folder to find it's all tentacles... err, I mean, can you imagine the shock when somebody who doesn't post on /. opens their porn folder to find it's all tentacles?
What? No pics?
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/08/squid_computer.html
oh well.. I don't know anyone else that got a fetish for squids
I suspect that P.Z. Myers hired him or one of his minions of the Pharyngula hoard
damnit, I'v been rickrolled!@!@!
Tentacle porn?
insane, they TALK about an image in this so called story instead of displaying it!
Ok, here are some pictures to make the story worth the 5 minutes /. is going to waste on it.
You can't handle the truth.
FTFA:
Maybe it's because of his past acts?
Obviously there's a pattern of acts of mass cartoonery...
True, but he also installed also pics of sea urchins, who are the enemy in the Great Invertebrate War.
Everything was going swimmingly until he got hooked, line and sinker by the police who smelt something fishy. I wonder if he was acting on behalf of Sid The Squida thieving octopus who was released early last year from NZ.
Waiting for the other shoe to...
Release the Kraken
Wouldn't you think then they would target creationism supporters - or at least guise it with a few randoms?
4 randoms - then BAM got Ken Ham's HDD full of squiddy goodness.
I would also suspect 4chan being in on it.
I'm currently reading China Mieville's Kraken, so this strikes me as a possible sign of the ends of the world.
"Be nice, veer left, and never stop thinking" Iain Banks - Walking On Glass
There have been and always will be vandals.
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
You manage to obscure the actual content of the story by misdirection and lack of information.
I realize the motivation behind writing 'teaser' articles -- get people to read the full article rather than just the summary.
But it ends up being like Network News
"7 things in your pantry that can give you EBOLA... coming up after these commercials!"
Please stop.
If it's any consolation, "ikatako" is a word that's just "squid" and "octopus" stuck together (ika / tako).
quick google search
enjoy.
Do anyone really use Winny? I thought it were replaced with Perfect Dark for years ago. Maybe PD isnt a successor?
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
Althrough page above is in Japanese, I'd say a picture is worth a thousand words.
Yes, you are correct. Anyone that shows a deep interest in computers or software, especially the younger generation, should be put in jail. No wait, the death penalty! Yeah, that'll shut 'em up real good. Now everyone can go back to their cookie-cutter life.
Some might say he was played for a sucker.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Else they'll start trying to destroy hardrives with virtual butyric acid
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
> Perhaps we need to just take the micky out people like this so at least younger kids don't see hacking others computers as a very smart thing to do.
Perhaps we should teach younger kids what "hacking" really mean, so they start naming things for what they really are: property destruction, trespassing or invading in this case.
And thus, certain people would have one less device to prevent innovation. BTW, and generally speaking, preventing innovation is arguably one form of evil.
Hacking is just as badly viewed as elucubration (at least, in my country); these activities are hated by those who abhor thinking and favor brainless action (though, of course, anything in excess is damaging).
How does it infect a text file? With number 33[*]?
[*] Ceterum censeo Virgulapuncto esse unicodifectum.
The article seems a little unclear as to whether or not destruction of files really took place.
On the one hand, it says that the files in question could not be recovered from the users' systems since they were overwritten.
On the other hand, it says that they were uploaded to a central server.
So were they "destroyed" or not?
Naturally, I couldn't even glance at this headline without thinking of Bruce Schneier. He has written a post on his blog disclaiming responsibility. On the other hand, if there's anyone at all who can hunt down the perpetrators... this will easily be the most epic cyber-battle ever!
(From the "don't explain the joke" department: Schneier is a well-respected and, some say, godlike security expert. He has a tradition or running joke of "Friday Squid Blogging" where he posts something squid-related every Friday. I couldn't turn up an explanation of it, but I assume it's because he likes squids.)
"This algorithm runs in constant time. Come on, 2,147,483,648 is a constant..."
You know why there's so much violent crime in the US? Because the psychopaths know that, thanks to people like you, they will be constantly supplied with sex slaves paid for by our tax dollars.
They charged him somewhat improperly the first time and so the criminal was confused about what his REAL crime was.
Dealing with Japanese people frequently, I encounter similar communications problems in that the most important issues aren't mentioned often enough. Quite frequently, they only mention one reason or one problem or one symptom. For whatever reason, they feel no need to add more for completeness or accuracy. It is interesting to see that they not only do this to me, but they do it to themselves as well. So they charge him the first time on copyright infringement. Naturally, he believes that is the extent of what he did wrong the first time since there was no mention of other crimes in his original charges. So, he does it again...
The first time I encountered this strange behavior, it was with a Japanese girlfriend. If I asked her to do something and she didn't want to, she would offer a reason why not. And after addressing the concern, she would come up with another reason why not. Eventually, I would get to the core reason(s) why not, but only after persistently digging into the issue. At first, I thought it was just her. But after working with Japanese people extensively, I have found that this is rather common. So when dealing with Japanese users, they might offer up a single problem or symptom omitting any additional information. Naturally, I either assume the problem is one thing that it is not based on the absence of important symptoms described or that it is a new issue not yet encountered before. I know these people are not stupid. But I remain mystified as to how this peculiarity of communication has come to be.
While I recognize that Japanese culture and communications are strongly tied to context and general assumption of knowledge and understanding, it would seem they are so accustomed to that level of incompleteness of expression that it is simply so engrained into their thinking that it is applied to everything. Often I wonder why so many of their TV shows contain subtitles, but this goes a long way to explaining why.
In any case, I believe this is a clear case of them doing it to themselves this time! "Oh! So I was arrested for copyright infringement! Okay, so next time I will draw my own pictures and it won't be a problem!" Lovely. Cultural inbreeding....
But please remember, sea urchins are echinoderms, not cnidarians (those would be corals, sea anemones, hydra and jellyfish).
Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
Squidward Tentacles is assisting police with their inquiries.
There's no mention of pirates or piracy in TFA. So why is it in TFS??? It's a red herring.
welcome our new cephalapod overlords!
NEEEEEEEEERD!
Oh wait.
Paul? Is that you?