Ikatako Virus Replaces Victims' Files With Pictures of Squid 105
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."
cephalopods are no crime (Score:4, Funny)
Screw Japan, free cephalopods!
But echinoderms are(was: cephalopods are no crime) (Score:3, Funny)
True, but he also installed also pics of sea urchins, who are the enemy in the Great Invertebrate War.
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But please remember, sea urchins are echinoderms, not cnidarians (those would be corals, sea anemones, hydra and jellyfish).
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But they're so creepy. They're creepy and even T-rex is afraid of them. [qwantz.com]
squid pro quo (Score:5, Funny)
Re:squid pro quo (Score:5, Funny)
he programmed in octal
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Since squid have 10 arms, wouldn't that be decimal?
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I don't know about you, but I have two ARM cross-compilers installed.
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I thought octopi had 8 arms. Wouldn't that be hex?
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http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/octopi [wiktionary.org]
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/octopi [merriam-webster.com]
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/octopode [wiktionary.org]
It's interesting to note that only Wiktionary has octopode where as M-W.com doesn't (at least not in their freely available dictionary).
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The fact that the word in question is in M-W suggests you're the one who's wrong. M-W isn't Wiktionary:it doesn't use consensus.
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Yah! Toronto is a province. The capital of Canada is C.
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If you want to make octopus a plural, in greek it becomes octopode
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So Wiktionary was right in calling octopi hypercorrect and M-W needs to update. That's all I needed to know.
The others that went all out bat-crazy on me...well...
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The key being that squids are not octopi, they're decapods.
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squid-octopus virus. Not just squid.
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some of them are
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No, all of them are decapods.
Class: Cephalopoda
Subclass: Coleoidea
Superorder: Decapodiformes
Order: Teuthida.
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http://live.tolweb.org/Octopoteuthidae/19834 [tolweb.org]
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thought octopi had 8 arms. Wouldn't that be hex?
Japanese consider them to have eight legs, not eight arms. Seriously.
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That's even more disturbing.
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You might want to check what the word "octopus" actually means.
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maths fail ):
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I see that you did there.
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What? What do you want now? Can't I even get a day off?
Re:cephalopod hentai? (Score:5, Informative)
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I had no idea tentacle porn was so old.
We are doomed.
Re:cephalopod hentai? (Score:5, Funny)
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 .
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You mean, Africa and the Middle East, ostensibly the cradle of humanity (whether or not you buy into creationism or evolution, both are based in those areas), didn't have sexual perversion before Asian societies?
Ikatako Virus Replaces Victims' Files With Picture (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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All I really wanted from TFA was a picture of the squid.
I guess this could be the squid in question [scforum.info]
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Yeah ok, that's an octopus. Haven't started on my first coffee of the day yet.
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If it's any consolation, "ikatako" is a word that's just "squid" and "octopus" stuck together (ika / tako).
Re:Ikatako Virus Replaces Victims' Files With Pict (Score:2)
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Yes, you are correct. Anyone that shows a deep interest in computers or software, especially the younger generation, should be put in jail. No wait, the death penalty! Yeah, that'll shut 'em up real good. Now everyone can go back to their cookie-cutter life.
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> 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.
Perhaps we should teach younger kids what "hacking" really mean, so they start naming things for what they really are: property destruction, trespassing or invading in this case.
And thus, certain people would have one less device to prevent innovation. BTW, and generally speaking, preventing innovation is arguably one form of evil.
Hacking is just as badly v
No pics? (Score:3, Funny)
"Your Rights Online"? (Score:2, Insightful)
Sorry, but how is this a YRO issue?
Re:"Your Rights Online"? (Score:5, Informative)
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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 tha
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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.
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If you look on the left hand side of the page there, you'll notice there aren't really any other categories for legal stuff, and technically speaking all things related to the legal system have to do your rights.
So, it may seem like a bit of a stretch, but yes writing a virus that destroys people's files is definitely a YRO issue. For example, if it were legal to write viruses that destroyed people's hard drive, and then Congress passed a law to stop it, would that not be a YRO issue? It seems to fit the
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Property destruction or not? (Score:2)
The article seems a little unclear as to whether or not destruction of files really took place.
On the one hand, it says that the files in question could not be recovered from the users' systems since they were overwritten.
On the other hand, it says that they were uploaded to a central server.
So were they "destroyed" or not?
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It concerns the violation of your right not to quarter squids on your computer. It's a little known unwritten addendum to the third amendment.
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Tentacle P...ictures? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Tentacle P...ictures? (Score:4, Interesting)
Octoporn: Pornography that depicts an, in fact, real octopus being ejected from a human orifice. The act is classically accompanied by a copious amount of unappetizing muscular contractions. The resulting ejection is considered a delicacy in at least nine countries.
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PIX! (Score:2, Insightful)
It was probably a paid hit (Score:3, Funny)
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4 randoms - then BAM got Ken Ham's HDD full of squiddy goodness.
I would also suspect 4chan being in on it.
What did the virus mask itself as on P2P? (Score:2)
Tentacle porn?
worthless without pics (Score:5, Funny)
insane, they TALK about an image in this so called story instead of displaying it!
Ok, here [fixie-king.dk] are some [gstatic.com] pictures [michaelstarrart.com] to make [coolest-gadgets.com] the story [gstatic.com] worth [wordpress.com] the 5 minutes [ua.adme.ru] /. is going [armsport.am] to waste [svezhak.org.ua] on it.
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There's a video on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwaAArO_CZw [youtube.com]
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now that's a son of a bitch, imagine some poor schmucks losing their videos, photos, documents. This Masato Nakatsuji character should harakiri himself before someone else does it. I have created a number of viruses but never released them to unsuspecting audience, it's just mean, and in this case also stupid.
BTW., that video is actually taken with a camcorder, that's a riot.
A "hardened" computer hacker? (Score:3, Insightful)
FTFA:
Maybe it's because of his past acts?
Obviously there's a pattern of acts of mass cartoonery...
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Yup, it's because of his past act. Source is asahi.com; they're okay with a presumption of guilt on the second act. It's part of how Japan works. They have an absurdly high conviction rate. Basically, the police interrogate the hell out of the accused, keeping no records and no time limit, until they have a considerable 'confession' to hand to the prosecution, who presents it to a judge, sans jury.
Admittedly they're /finally/ starting to bitch for recording interrogations
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If only we could send black hats, virus writers and script kiddies everywhere to Japan for proper sorting and disposal.
I, for one (Score:2)
Cephalapod fetish hacker scooped in police dragnet (Score:4, Funny)
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Some might say he was played for a sucker.
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Release the Kraken (Score:2)
Release the Kraken
China Mieville (Score:1)
Submitter: stop trying to be clever (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Perhaps you're giving them too much credit and they really are trying to emulate network news - news for retards. See why your local dentist may be more than a mouthful. Coming up next!
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Thanks, I am glad you enjoyed it. Next time blame the editors who chose to publish it without my witty title... ... and the sentence explaining that he was charged with destruction of "property".
What's amazing about this case is that the "victims" were actually violating the Japanese law by downloading copyrighted files, while Nakatsuji is not, but the Police has something against "virus" writers and uses whatever unconstitutional and illegal way they can think of to bust them.
Other than that, the summary d
FYI: Strange sense of pursuit of quality (Score:4, Informative)
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 [fc2.com]
Althrough page above is in Japanese, I'd say a picture is worth a thousand words.
Don't tell Sea Shepherd (Score:1, Offtopic)
Else they'll start trying to destroy hardrives with virtual butyric acid
Schneier! (Score:2)
Naturally, I couldn't even glance at this headline without thinking of Bruce Schneier. He has written a post on his blog disclaiming responsibility. [schneier.com] On the other hand, if there's anyone at all who can hunt down the perpetrators... this will easily be the most epic cyber-battle ever!
(From the "don't explain the joke" department: Schneier is a well-respected and, some say, godlike [schneierfacts.com] security expert. He has a tradition or running joke of "Friday Squid Blogging" where he posts something squid-related every Friday
This is the Japanese police's fault (Score:4, Interesting)
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....
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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.
What place of earth do you live on where women do tell you immediately the core reason behind whatever they refuse to do? Seriously.
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I'll grant that it seems to describe typical female behavior, but it is more extreme than "typical." And after re-reading my own post, I neglected to mention that this behavior is, in fact, in their linguistic patterns as well. To anyone who has learned enough of the language ever notice that they rarely if ever enumerate or list things in their speech? In English, we do it all the time. We do it for the following reasons:
1. To be clear
2. To be complete
3. To illustrate my point
While there are certainly
TFS mentions pirates -- why? (Score:1)
There's no mention of pirates or piracy in TFA. So why is it in TFS??? It's a red herring.
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You know why there's so much violent crime in the US? Because the psychopaths know that, thanks to people like you, they will be constantly supplied with sex slaves paid for by our tax dollars.