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Alleged Malware Source Sends Note With Doraemon, Tales of Eternia Lookalikes
posted on by Egan Loo
Early on New Year's Day, ITmedia, Sankei, and other news organizations received an email message from a person who claimed to be the "real criminal" behind the malware that allows an attacker to remotely control a victim's computer. The message introduces a "new game" for revealing more information about the alleged suspect.
The message linked to several files, and claimed that the first person to "solve the five puzzle problems" in the files will receive an automated email with the source code for the "iesys" malware and a longer message from the alleged suspect.
One of the files contained what ITmedia described as an illustration of the Korean Doraemon lookalike Tonchamon, as well as an illustration of the character Meredy from the role-playing game Tales of Eternia. Tonchamon has a speech balloon with Korean Hangul characters, while Meredy has a speech balloon with "Happy New Year" written in Melnics, the fictional language in Tales of Eternia.
The New Year's email message was sent from the same address that also sent a message in November. In that earlier message, the person said "I will now kill myself by hanging" and "Sayonara." The message added, "I made a mistake. I lost the game," and included a photograph of a Puella Magi Madoka Magica Nendoroid figure of Madoka Kaname, surrounded by an apparent noose fashioned from an Ethernet cable.
Police had arrested anime technical director Masaki Kitamura (Gundam 00) in August for sending massacre threats, but released him one month later after they determined that the malware likely enabled someone else to send the threats from Kitamura's computer. Three other individuals held on similar charges were also released, and the government publicly apologized for arresting them.
The Japanese joint investigation on the malware dispatched five investigators to the United States in November to seek the FBI's assistance in identifying the email sender.
Source: ITmedia via My Game News Flash
