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.
Japanese police is charging people for _posting link to a site_ that run
`for(;;){window.alert('lol you can't get rid of this message even you keep closing modal')}`
because it's "unlawful program"
— Mariko Kosaka (@kosamari) March 4, 2019
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.
Joking aside, Japan implemented "computer virus law" in 2011 that people has been warning it could be misinterpreted in ridiculous way. 13yo girl to got caught for _just posting link to infinite loop that she didn't write_ and I'm furious as used-to-be-13-girl-on-the-Internet.
— Mariko Kosaka (@kosamari) March 5, 2019
Horrible crime! Why not ‘while(true)’ for the loop instead??
(In seriousness, this is crazy 🙁)
— Guy Waldman (@guywald) March 5, 2019
probably not in ie6
/* hides */
— Francis 🏴☠️ Gulotta (@reconbot) March 5, 2019
i tried running the code. it was not very effective – you could just close the tab