A 14-year-old child in Osaka, Japan, has been arrested for creating and distributing ransomware, the first known arrest in the country for the crime and also potentially the youngest ransomware maker arrested anywhere in the world to date.

The unnamed child, who is said to be a third-grade junior high school student, was arrested June 5 and confessed to police under voluntary questioning that he had created the ransomware to test his ability as a programmer. “I tested my skills, and I could make one,” The Asahi Shimbun reported him as saying.

Experimenting in the creation of ransomware may not seem like a particularly serious crime. But it’s what the child did next that has gotten him into trouble. He not only uploaded his ransomware to the Internet but also advertised its availability on his Twitter account. It’s not clear from reports whether the ransomware itself was used in any malicious campaigns, but police did add that they believe the code had been downloaded about 100 times.

The student also apparently told authorities that he learned the code on his own, and created the malware on his home computer in a matter of days in an effort to become famous.

Although the unnamed child may be the youngest ever arrested for the creation and distribution of ransomware, young kids dabbling in the dark Internet arts is not a new phenomenon. In 2013, a 12-year-old child in Canada was arrested for hacking major government websites on behalf of the Anonymous hacking collective. In 2016 a 15-year-old Scottish boy was arrested for hacking the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The arrest of the child comes at a time of unprecedented awareness of the dangers and risks presented by ransomware, following more than 300,000 computers across 150 countries getting infected with the WannaCry ransomware last month.

Photo: Monty Python