Omoshiroi

A Chinese court in Beijing decided a Chinese online game company have to pay damages to a gamer who’s account has been compromised on the companies server.

Over a period of two years 24-year-old Li Hongchen collected a nice sum of virtual money and weapons in the game, named “Red Moon”. To accomplish this he also had to invest money in the real world, not to mention time and energy. “I exchanged the equipment with my labour, time, wisdom and money, and of course they are my belongings,” he said to a Chinese newspaper.

Last February a cracker got access to the server over a exploit which has not been closed, and stole the virtual properties of Li Hongchen.

Now the court decided the company will have to return his virtual belongings to Li Hongchen. It is not known if the company also needs to pay real life money to Li Hongchen.

Everyone who has been actively engaged in maintaining and managing a IRC network knows how many compromised servers are being abused on IRC. It will be interesting to see if at some point a company decides to sue a Chinese company who’s hacked server has been used to abuse or DDoS, as the Chinese court now showed it will be holding a company liable for poor security.

Taken from somewhere on the net. :P