Slashdot Mirror


Japanese Police Charge 13-Year-Old Girl For Sharing 'Unclosable Popup' Code Online (zdnet.com)

"Japanese police have brought in, questioned, and charged a 13-year-old female student from the city of Kariya for sharing [links to] browser exploit code online," writes ZDNet. An anonymous reader shares their report: The code was a mere prank that triggered an infinite loop in JavaScript to show an "unclosable" popup when users accessed a certain link, Japanese news agency NHK reported yesterday. The popup could be closed in some browsers -- such as Edge and Firefox on desktop -- but couldn't be closed in others, such as Chrome on desktop and the majority of mobile browsers.

The popup was hosted in several places online, and police say the teenager helped spread the links... The teenage girl did not create the malicious code, which had been shared on online forums by multiple users for the past few years. NHK reported that police also searched the house of a second suspect, 47-year-old man from Yamaguchi, and are also looking at three other suspects for the same "crime" of sharing the link on internet forums.

Ars Technica found a tweet suggesting that the code was actually written in 2014.

3 of 132 comments (clear)

  1. Re:It's not a "crime". by gweihir · · Score: 3, Insightful

    North Korea and historic Nazi Germany also has different laws. Does not mean these laws are sane, moral or acceptable.

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  2. Re: Matter of perspective. by c6gunner · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Ah, good old moral relativism! Who are we to tell Nazis that it's wrong to kill all their Jewish citizens? That's the height of entitlement! They're allowed to have their own rules!

  3. Re:Juvenile criminal records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    one example is not a citation backing up 'no shortage of murdering kids'