14-year-old Boy Arrested in Japan for Creating Ransomware Virus

A 14-year-old boy was detained in Japan for creating a ransomware program, which asks for a ransom payment to access the infected computer.

According to sources in The Japan Times , the teenager is a third-year high school student in Takatsuki city, located in Osaka. The teenager was arrested on Monday this week for combining various free encryption programs to create specialized malware to make computer files inaccessible unless a sum of money was paid.

The young student stated that he learned to make ransomware on his own with the aim of becoming famous. He also said he launched the malicious program on the Web last January 6, inviting potential victims to download the file through social networks and then demand payments in Bitcoin currency.

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The teenager noted that Ransomware was downloaded more than 100 times.  However, the Authority had not reported any financial losses caused by any such malware.

Police in Kanagawa reported that the malware was detected on a cyber patrol last January.

In this way, the officials carried out a search that took them to the home of the Japanese student where they confiscated the computer of the teenager. And also, the sources confirmed that the teenager had messages from his Twitter account claiming that he was the author of the program.

But the malware developed by the teen is thought to have nothing to do with the global attack, according to the police.

“Ransomware is on the rise with the spread of the virtual currency bitcoin, which allows records of transactions to be erased,” said Tetsutaro Uehara, a professor at Ritsumeikan University who specializes in information security.

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Noting it is difficult to recover data locked up by Ransomware, Uehara said it is “crucial to make backups just in case.”Computer security firm Trend Micro Inc. detected over 65,400 Ransomware attacks in Japan last year, up 9.8-fold from the year before, it said.

Source : Japan times