13-year-old Japanese girl arrested for sharing infinite loop code

Japanese teenager arrested for posting ‘unclosable popup’ online

A 13-year-old girl studying in junior high school in Kariya-shi, Aichi Prefecture was arrested by the Hyogo Prefectural Police Department in Japan for posting an “unlawful program” on a public online forum, according to Japanese outlet NHK.

The “program” in question was a malicious link that opened a window running a JavaScript snippet that throws a user’s browser into an infinite loop.

The girl had posted a link to a so-called “browser crasher” website that triggered an unclosable popup that appeared with the annoying message: “No matter how many times you try, you won’t be able to close this.”

When the girl was questioned by the police, she justified her actions by saying that “I had some problems in the past, so I thought it would be amusing if someone clicked on it.”

Although the teenage girl did not create the malicious code, the police said that she helped in spreading the links. Apparently, she was “guided” (a form of youth offender intervention in Japan) for spreading an unauthorized program.

Like the teenage girl who did not create the code, another two suspects, a 39-year-old unemployed man in Yamaguchi Prefecture and a 47-year-old construction worker in Kagoshima Prefecture, two were arrested for just posting the malicious links on different bulletin boards.

The Japanese police traced the girl by examining the logs of the post which contained the link. The teenager is now under protective custody on the charges of “spreading electric record of unlawful instruction” since March 4.

Japanese Twitter users took to the social media to express their anger against Hyogo Prefectural Police Department.

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