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.

Comments

Re:Heh.

[dissy]

When I was a kid I had javascript on my homepage that would open your CD drive. I'd probably be looking at 10-20 these days, eh?

When I was a kid it was:
20 GOTO 10

Can you imagine the conversation in the prison cell?
"What are you in for?"
"Javascript popup, you?"
"A goto command in basic"
"Goto?! you monster!"