Creators of Notorious Malware Tried for their Role in Online Gambling Games

People's Daily Online reported on 19th December, 2013 stating that two Chinese hackers who were imprisoned earlier for writing a nasty computer virus, again stood for trial recently on charges of running online gambling websites.

A court in Lishui City, Zhejiang Province, China, heard the case against 26 individuals that includes Zhang Shun and Li Jun, inventors of "joss-stick burning panda", popularly known as Panda virus (Fujacks) which damaged millions of computers in 2006 and 2007.

Prosecutors noted that the defendants in the case all belonged to a virtual gaming firm, ran numerous card games which permitted players to lay bets using virtual chips, as per news published by People's Daily Online on December 19, 2013.

More than 2,200 people joined in and 12.4 Million USD or 76 Million Yuan in totality was at stake and the company raked in 8 Million Yuan by trading the chips.

Li caught public attention three years ago (2010) when he bequeathed money to a research firm for giant pandas as an act of remorse for making the virus that he christened after the rare bears.

The virus changed emblems on desktops into cartoon pandas holding three burning joss-sticks and inflicted havoc by damaging programs, deleting files, and embezzling gaming and messenger accounts. It (virus) was sold for $12.500 on the web.

Experts commented that the Chinese have a lot of cybercriminals out of which some hackers are causing extreme damage (as in the aforementioned event) where they created gambling websites which is illegal in China) but they (that is, Chinese Police) manage to catch them quickly.

Experts say that this case once again highlights the fact that crime does not pay.

The sentence bestowed on the hackers is not yet available.

Moreover, it is not just Chinese authorities that have been victorious in nabbing and impeaching cybercriminals in December 2013 as a 27 year-old Slovenian hacker Matjaz Skorjanc, who was nabbed in 2010 and charged of masterminding the notorious Mariposa botnet that compromised about 12.7 million computers around the world, was jailed for about 5 years on December, 24, 2013. He was also fined $4,100.

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