Japan Police say Hacker replaced Weather with Porn 


         Japanese police on Friday arrested a 27-year-old computer engineer
         suspected of replacing public weather charts on the Internet with
         pornographic pictures. 

         A spokesman for Osaka police said Koichi Kubojima, a resident of the
         northern Tokyo suburb of Fujimi, was the first person in Japan to be
         arrested for suspected violation of a 1987 anti-hacker law. 

         Kubojima is accused of taking over seven web pages of the
         Osaka-based television network Asahi Broadcasting Company on May
         18 and replacing five of the seven weather charts on the pages with
         pornographic pictures. He also faces charges under Japan's
         anti-obscenity laws. 

         Police said Kubojima told investigators he was just trying to have some
         fun and tried but failed to delete the pictures when he learned that his
         own actions were being reported all over on the Internet. 

         He used a fake password obtained from a local Internet provider to enter
         the website from his personal computer at home, but his operations were
         retraced by investigators through phone records kept at the provider
         firm, police said. 

         If convicted, Kubojima faces a fine of one million yen ($8,600) and a
         prison term of up to five years under tough penalties against hackers
         adopted in 1992. 

         ($1-116 yen) 
         REUTERS