The kid claims he did it “to surprise his friends.”

Take a moment to reflect on your formative elementary school years. When you were in third grade, did you enjoy swinging on the swings at recess? Shrieking anytime you got too close to catching “cooties” from the opposite sex? How about illegally developing and then distributing a computer virus for fun?

Yeah, that actually happened.

On March 15, Kanagawa Prefectural police referred a nine-year-old boy (elementary school third-grader) from Osaka Prefecture to a juvenile consultation center for allegedly creating a computer virus and then distributing it online for free downloads from May to June last year. A fourth-grader from Tokyo and a fifth-grader from Yamanashi Prefecture were also referred to the center for purposely downloading the virus.

The Osaka boy is certainly more resourceful than most of his elementary school peers, who are probably more invested in the delicate matter of who can tell the best fart joke at this point in their lives. He told police that he learned how to create the virus by using online videos as reference and that affected computers will display a series of new home screens in succession which will render them unable to perform regular operations. But perhaps most shockingly, he confessed that he was fully aware that what he was doing was wrong and his only motivation for creating the virus was to surprise his friends.

Net users responded to the news incredulously, with most stressing the need to harness his skills now to prevent him from becoming one of the “bad guys” later on:

“Forget his friends–he surprised a lot of adults, too. Mission accomplished.”
“This is a demonstration of his natural talent. I hope there’s an adult near him who can help him develop his skills responsibly.”
“His future looks promising. I’m sure his skills will be a great help to society someday!”
“When I was his age the most impressive thing I thought I could do was (unsuccessfully) try to calculate √2…”
“Um, isn’t anyone going to talk about the fact that a YouTuber or whoever explained how to create a virus simply enough for an elementary school student to understand…?”

Well, as long as his educators can provide some kind of outlet for his creative energies, we’re pretty confident that he won’t end up like this guy any time soon.

Source: Livedoor News 1, 2 via Hachima Kiko
Featured image: Pakutaso
Insert image: SoraNews24 via Imgflip