TOKYO, May 28, 2024—Police May 27 arrested a 25-year-old man for producing AI-generated computer virus, the first such arrest in the country, the daily Yomiuri reported on its on-line site May 28.
The unidentified man manufactured computer viruses by mobilizing a plural number of interactive generative artificial intelligence programs that are publicly available on the internet with his PCs and smart phones, a violation of the 2011 amendment to the Criminal Law on Information Processing Advancement that prohibits the manufacturing of computer viruses with generative AI programs.
His viruses bore such properties as encrypting target data so the data owner would not be able to access, and/or demanding payments in crypro assets to unlock such data, the newspaper quoted police as explaining. The man had admitted to have manufactured the ransomware viruses, telling the police that he intended to defraud targets for money.
CHAT-GPT and other generative AI programs disable answers relating to crimes, police said, but interactive AI programs publicly accessible on the internet provide answers that can be used as ransomware. The man instructed to those programs without disclosing virus manufacturing intentions, obtaining architectural information and source codes on data encryption and ransoms.
The police did not give details on which provisions of the law the man infringed on.
Violations of the law are subject to a range of fines from 500,000 yen ($3,200) to 5 million yen and/or five years of imprisonment.
The February 2024 National Police Agency annual report on crimes took note of growing cyber crimes. Internet banking crimes in terms of the sum of damage surged 465 percent in 2023, compared with 2022, it said. Ransomware cases decreased more than 10 percent in 2023 but the report cautioned against complacency. Potentially ruinous cyberspace access jumped nearly 20 percent, it said.
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