Two teenagers fined for spreading computer viruses
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The Riihimäki District Court sentenced two young men to pay fines for Internet-related information technology (IT) offences on Monday. The 17- and 19-year-old youngsters had used their personal Internet pages to publish harmful computer programmes, such as computer viruses and so-called Trojan horses.
The programmes the teenagers were spreading had been copied from elsewhere on the Internet. The young men's web-pages also contained links to other sites with harmful programmes. According to the District Court, publishing such links was against the law.
In addition to actual virus programmes, at least one of the boys also published source code on his website, which - with the help of a translator programme - could be used to create new computer programmes.
The National Bureau of Investigation (Finland's central criminal police) IT expert Juha Lampinen, who was heard in the case as a witness, considered publishing the source code more dangerous than spreading the virus programmes, as the source code could be used to prepare new computer viruses unknown to the present virus protection programmes.
The 19-year-old had also penetrated the websites of two organisations to add his own pseudonym there. According to the Court, the youth had received the usernames and the passwords that enabled him to enter the sites from his 17-year-old friend.
The Court found both defendants guilty of causing a potentially dangerous IT situation, unlawful use of websites, and criminal mischief, among other things.
The crimes were committed in 2004.
The District Court sentenced the young men to pay 60 and 50 day-fines, which translate to EUR 360 and EUR 300. The 17-year-old received the greater fine.
The Court ruled that the main motive of the youngsters, who were primarily underage at the time of the crimes, was not to cause danger or damage, but to experiment and to test their skills.
The experimenting caused only minimal financial damage, the Court established. The boys were sentenced to pay EUR 250 for the additional work caused to the Internet service provider of the two companies whose websites they violated.
Convictions in IT-related crimes of this particular nature are extremely rare in Finland. The key prosecutor of IT crimes, the Nokia District Court Prosecutor Mika Mäkinen, remembers only one previous case. In that instance, involving the e-mailing of a self-made computer virus, the 27-year-old defendant received a six-month suspended prison sentence. A flaw in the virus coding meant that the virus did not replicate itself in the recipients' computers.
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 21.2.2006 - TODAY |
 Two teenagers fined for spreading computer viruses
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