http://english.www.gov.tw/TaiwanHeadlines/index.jsp?categid=10&recordid=90518 Taiwan News 2006/01/13 A civil servant was arrested on Thursday after he was found to have used a self-designed computer program to assist people buying train tickets on the Internet for the coming Chinese New Year holiday. The 31-year-old suspect, identified by his last name as Lin, denied that he had profiteered from helping other people buy train tickets. Lin, however, did admit that he collected an undisclosed amount for providing this service, but said that the money was used to maintain his Web site "As U Wish." Black-market prices have doubled since tickets for the holiday period were bought up in only a few hours after the Taiwan Railway Administration began selling tickets a few weeks ago. With the help of the TRA and Chunghwa Telecom Co., agents from the Bureau of Criminal Investigation found Lin at his residence in Taipei City and asked him to come in for questioning at the BCI. Lin took advantage of a "virtual cash" mechanism set up by Internet banks to charge people for his service. Lin used his own program, which could repeatedly reload applications into the TRA's computer system until they accepted, to help people who wished to buy tickets intercept tickets returned by passengers who had canceled their reservations. A BCI spokesman said Lin was not the first one who has been arrested for taking advantage of the TRA's automatic reservation system for personal gain. Three other computer programmers were arrested and indicted on similar charges last year. Lin may be fined and sentenced to a prison term of up to five years for interfering with other people's use of their computers and for misusing his own computer to the degree of damaging public interests, which constitute being an offense of Article 360 and 361 of the Criminal Code. The TRA set up a new reservation system several years ago to allow passengers to make reservations through the Internet, so they did not have to line up before ticket booths for a few days as they had to do in the past in order to buy tickets. Still, train tickets for long holidays are still difficult to get hold of because scalpers often buy up tickets and then sell them for much higher prices. While investigating the case, BCI agents were surprised by the fact that many Internet banks did not even try to verify the identities of those who use their "virtual cash" mechanisms in transferring money into Lin's bank account. The BCI spokesman warned that criminals may take advantage of this loophole in Internet banking operations to commit crimes. He urged the authorities concerned to contact local banks in order to find ways to resolve problems related to Internet banking services. _________________________________ InfoSec News v2.0 - Coming Soon! http://www.infosecnews.org
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