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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
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.
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.
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?
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!
What? No pics?
Yes, I read TFA too. But the reason for my question was: How is it a YRO issue that you get arrested after making a harmful virus and spreading it. Would anyone here think that this should NOT be punishable?
As I understand the YRO category, it is mainly used for cases where there is a difference between what we think should be allowed/disallowed/possible, and what authorities/courts/companies/legislators think should be allowed/disallowed/possible. And I see no such difference here.
Of course it is funny that he thought he could legally get away with destroying other peoples' files as long as he made sure not to use any copyrighted material in the process. But that belongs in the Idle category, I think.
I suspect that P.Z. Myers hired him or one of his minions of the Pharyngula hoard
Perhaps it's because one of "your rights online" is "to not have your files arbitrarily replaced with octopus manga".
I don't think /. editors should decide on beforehand what I think is right/wrong. This is related to internet laws so it fits in the YRO category.
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...
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).
Some might call it "art". Check this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dream_of_the_Fisherman's_Wife
This is not my sig.
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.
Sounds like a clear case of theft then if the file was basically "moved" to a central server. Most of the time on forums like this people are always arguing how making a copy isn't theft since the original has not been affected or taken. In this case, the original is gone. So it seems to meet the test for "this was theft"...
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....
I had no idea tentacle porn was so old.
We are doomed.
You backwards Western barbarian, while your ancestors were still painting themselves blue and living in caves, sexual perversion was already running rampant in Asian societies .