Heavy sentence given to creator of 'ika-tako' virus
The Tokyo District Court on Wednesday sentenced a 28-year-old man to two years and six months in prison without suspension on charges of property destruction for creating a computer virus, spreading it on the Internet and damaging data in infected computers.
This is the first time that property destruction charges have been applied to a computer virus creator.
According to the ruling, Masato Nakatsuji of Izumisano, Osaka Prefecture, who is unemployed, created a data-destroying virus, dubbed ika-tako (squid-octopus), that replaced files in hard disks of infected computers with illustrations of squid and octopuses. Nakatsuji uploaded files containing the ika-tako virus to the Internet via file-sharing software, including the popular Winny, between May and July last year. Three people downloaded the files, which subsequently set off the virus in the hard disks of their computers.
