Singapore man faces 180 years in prison

Lin Zhenghuang, 21, was charged last week with facetiously warning of a bomb at a local bus stop - just after the London subways and bus bombings. Other site users reported Lin's post to authorities, according to an Associated Press report.

Lin, who uses the online pseudonym "krisurf," also faces 60 charges of illegally accessing nine wireless networks between July 2005 and February 2006, according to the AP. Each charge carries a maximum penalty of three years in prison and US$6,500 in fines.

Lin has been charged with violating Singapore's Computer Misuse Act.

Garyl Tan Jia Luo, 17, was also charged with accessing the web via another person's internet connection in November of last year. A neighbor told authorities that Tan had accessed his web connection in May 2006.

source: http://www.securecomputing.net.au/News/70959,singapore-man-faces-180-years-in-prison.aspx


As you can see, cybercrimes happen everywhere, even in sunny Singapore! The above mentioned incident happened just after the London bombing, as well as another guy who was charged with "accessing the web" through someone else's connection.

Cybercrimes can happen in all sorts of ways, apart from viruses, trojans, worms and so on. Cybercrimes can affect the community as a whole (like the bombscare), by posting false information and causing grieviences.

But in a way, I guess viruses are the still most common form of a cybercrime as they happen on a very small scale and tracking the source is often a difficult task.

I remember getting a virus before and it was a traumatic experience due to my computer illiteracy in terms of its technicalities. A friend of mine, who did not know that he/she (i cannot remember) had the virus sent me one unknowingly. I guess that's what they do. they multiply without the user's knowledge and send themselves to other users. Being a naive user at that time, I happily accepted the file and before I knew it, I had a virus attack!

We are often so used to accepting files from friends that sometimes, it is an oversight on our part to not check the file and varify with the user if the file was really sent by him/her.

Thankfully, the problem was able to be resolved thanks to a friend of mine.

MSN and Facebook are also common places in which viruses thrive. As of the past week, ive had random people on my facebook chatlist sending me random messages which I knew thay would not have normally sent. The same goes to MSN.

I guess, it is really important that we all protect our computers using anti-virus softwares and update them regularly. We should also always varify with the sender if it was them who sent the file, especially if they look dubious.

At the end of the day, a little effort to protect our computers go a long way. Saves us a lot more trouble as compared to having to send our laptops/ computers for recovery if we really get hit by one.

6:44 PM ·