Japanese Police Offers First-Ever Reward For Wanted Hacker

alphadogg writes "Japanese police are looking for an individual who can code in C#, uses a 'Syberian Post Office' to make anonymous posts online, and knows how to surf the web without leaving any digital tracks — and they're willing to pay. It is the first time that Japan's National Police Agency has offered a monetary reward for a wanted hacker, or put so much technical detail into one of its wanted postings. The NPA will pay up to $36,000, the maximum allowed under its reward system. The case is an embarrassing one for the police, in which earlier this year 4 individuals were wrongly arrested after their PCs were hacked and used to post messages on public bulletin boards. The messages included warnings of plans for mass killings at an elementary school posted to a city website."

They're lucky if they're caught.

[GoodNewsJimDotCom]

I think hackers have more to fear from the mafia underground than legal authorities. If you get caught by the federalies, they'll put you in prison for a few years, and you can rethink your criminal ways. However... if you start looking for profit with your data breeches, and you start looking into money mule networks then the mafia and seedy underground isn't very far away. What if that breech at the door isn't the feds, but some mafiaa goons who tell you to keep doing what you're doing, but they'll protect you for the cool price of all your profits. People who look to get into a life of crime may find it.

It is only a matter of time before a crime syndicate forms over all these careless hackers. They could recruit spammers, and hackers could be used to find more hackers...

great detective work

[slashmydots]

Classic framing/griefing. Obviously they should add "and they probably know all 4 of those people" to the evidence list. I guess they overlooked that little tidbit. Otherwise good luck tracking down proxies and Tor exit nodes cuz that info is as worthless as it gets when it comes to finding this person.