It’s one thing to get a virus like Trojan or a worm and lose all your files, but its another to get a virus that replaces all your files with anime sea creatures. I guess the hacker thought it would be funny. For those that don’t know, Ika-tako is Japanese for squid-octopus. Since May, it has infected anywhere between 20,000 and 50,000 computers, according to Asahi.com. The virus is usually disguised as music files, which many people download. When the file is played, the malware then spreads through the entire hard drive infecting all files. The infected files are then switched out with the sea creature pictures and sent to the hacker’s server.
The virus disguises itself in music files, which users then download. Once the file is played, the malware runs through the computer’s hard drive, infecting anything from family photos to important OS files. The infected files are swapped with the squid, octopus or sea urchin pictures and removed, then supposedly sent to the hacker's server.
The good news is that the hacker, Masato Nakatsuji, was found and arrested. It’s not the first time this guy has been arrested for malware creation either--he was convicted for crafting a similar virus back in 2008, but had used images from the copyrighted anime cartoon Clannad. He reportedly told police this time that he wanted to see “how much my computer programming skills had improved since the last time I was arrested.”This time, he was arrested on the grounds of property destruction, a first for police in Tokyo. At least he handmade the images himself this time I guess.
Unfortunately there is no known fix for the virus just yet, so bad news for those already infected, unless police can get into the server he set up. However, considering he had thousands of people’s information stored on the server, it shouts to me that there was a bigger motive behind this virus that just practicing his computer skills.
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