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A 27 year-old Japanese computer hacker has been arrested on suspicion of creating a computer virus that wipes out all the files on the infected systems and replaces them with homemade manga images of squid, octopuses and sea urchins.According to Asashi, Masato Nakatsuji, of Izumisano, Osaka Prefecture, who had been previously arrested for violating copyright laws by writing malware that replaced data with an anime image, said to the police: "I wanted to see how much my computer programming skills had improved since the last time I was arrested."A police department specialized in cybercrime said Nakatsuji was held in relation with the Ikatako (squid-octopus) virus, which got spread via the Winny file-sharing program (the most popular p2p client in Japan) in May, disguised as a file for anime songs.The virus gets its name because infected files are replaced by manga images of a squid, octopus or sea urchin. If the virus is left unchecked, all files in the computer's hard disk become infected. When a user tries to open a file, all the individual can access is a manga image of a marine invertebrate.Ikatako also is programmed to send all the files in the infected computer to a server Nakatsuji is believed to have created as well. According to police he had told them that the server contained data collected from about 50,000 people. So far, police have confirmed that the virus has made about 20,000 victims.
"I wanted to see how much my computer programming skills had improved since the last time I was arrested."
