14 DAY TRIAL // Well, if you're in China, you could get $12.500, but it's more probable to get 5 years... or more! Malware developers that have created the annoying Fujacks worm are being trialed in China for their deeds. The culprits Li Jun, Wang Lei, Zhang Shun and Lei Lei are facing charges in a people's court in Hubei province, as Sophos informs us.
Li Jun is the one that has written the script for the worm, but he has also created a software that would clear any PCs of it, so that's why his sentence might be lighter. What he did, after creating this malware was to sell it to 12 clients for the sum mentioned above, fact which conducted to many computer infections.
This worm is famous for how it acts with .exe files - it infects them all (yes, it's a parasitic one) and not only makes some unusable but it also changes their icons, fact that can not go unseen. The icon of the infected .exe file looks just like a cute panda bear burning joss-sticks. But trust me, there's nothing cute about this virus, it has infected millions of computers in China this year and it spread really fast.
Anyway, if the ones that are behind this get convicted, they will face at least five years, according to Chinese laws. Actually, to be honest, I'm quite surprised that China isn't harsher with punishing cyber-crime, knowing how they treat other criminals - let's not Forget that Chinese authorities have executed many people according to their laws.
As Graham Cluely, senior technology consultant for Sophos has stated for their website, cybercrime is increasingly evolving into being driven by money so that's why the authorities take a harder line against its perpetrators. He had also said that criminal hackers should think long and hard before committing e-crimes to see if that money they could obtain is really worth wasting whole years of their lives in jail.