Cat could help nab a hacker causing mayhem in japan

Six months ago, someone broke into a city website and posted a message describing a plot to kill students at a local elementary school. A month later, he hacked the website of another city and threatened mass murder there. Then he sent an email to an airline claiming that a bomb had been planted on one of its aircraft.

And that was just the beginning. This guy’s been sending similar messages steadily ever since.

Cat and laptop computer by Shutterstock" />

This kind of mayhem, however, is not happening in the United States. This self-described hacker is on the rampage in Japan.

He has been able to elude authorities by leaving anonymous posts on message board sites and hacking into various computers to make the messages difficult to trace back to their source.

But there may have been a breakthrough in the case. On Wednesday, police found a digital memory card attached to the collar of a cat living on the island of Enoshima, just outside Tokyo. The memory card contained riddles from the hacker.

Kitten wearing shiny pink collar by Shutterstock" />

Japan is a pretty high-surveillance nation, and cameras on the island recorded men taking photos of cats, including the collared cat. The National Police Agency now believes one of the people photographing the cat may be the hacker in question.

Of course, if I were a hacker who loved playing mind games and I were trying to mess with authorities’ heads, I’d probably be smart enough to know there’s heavy surveillance in the area and hire a bunch of people to go take pictures of the cat, hoping to send the cops on a wild goose chase. But, then again, maybe my recent media consumption diet of spy movies has got me thinking like a TV spook.

Source: ABC News