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The Virus Did It
scubacuda writes "The Inquirer and Get Reading report that a UK man accused of having pornographic pictures of kids on his computer was acquitted after a court heard that his machine was infected with a Trojan on his PC which probably auto-downloaded the images. (In light of moves like Operation Ore, we'll probably hear more defenses like this.)"
Human: I plead insanity! I wasn't aware of my actions at the time that I was doing them. I can't be held responsible.
Computer: I plead trojan. I wasn't aware of my actions at the time that I was doing them. I can't be held responsible.
Perhaps Mr. Schofield should be charged with the misdemeanor offense "Running Windows".
Some community service should put things aright, methinks.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
I guess you should have invested in some virus protection software. Could have saved a lot of money.
...of making a virus that downloads child pr0n onto a remote computer? I thought virii were created to wreak havoc, not frame random computer users... or am I wrong? And furthermore, if a jury can believe this defense, what's to keep all the imminent RIAA and MPAA suits from being defused by the same argument? FIRST POST! WOO!!
"Life in every breath... that is bushido"
- Bill
They've been downloading MP3s, porn, movies, all kinds of stuff I am not aware of!
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Yet another example of why the decision to allow defendants in criminal trials to be named was a bad decision *sigh*.
As to the story - sounds strange that a trojan would do that unless someone was using his machine as a proxy and in that case why would the images be cached on his system?
This bloke lived near me, he was hounded out of his home by ignorant fuckwits who presume that becuase somebody lives with their mother and father (after the age of 18) and is being done for paedophile images, the must be guilty.
It's a bit of a wake up call to the moronic masses that people can be innocent as well as guilty!
The more it goes, the more I think that the main issue of online security is not the protocols (SSL, SET...) but the security of the endpoints, and particularly of the clients.
I would not be surprised if we found a virus that searches through the local (and even LAN-accessible) documents for interesting keywords or types of information, then somehow manages to send this information back to some spying agency. In fact, I think this has probably already been done.
Imagine the potential:Of course, most corporate networks are firewalled. Still, lots of binary data is exchanged. You just have to hide yours in the flux... Do you really think this would be noticed in the middle of a virus attack?. Traffic analysis would be thwarted by the viral attack sending information in many directions, with no obvious destination. Onion peel routing and distribution through Usenet or WWW bulletin boards could do the rest - untracable information.
The problem this guy is going to face is that, despite his conviction, the prevailing mood in the UK is such that he will still find himself stigmatised for a very long time.
As he found out from the vigilante attacks before his trial, the maxim "innocent until proven guilty" doesn't seem to apply for some people any more - the witch hunts led by certain newspapers mean that any slight suggestion of paedophilia turns the accused into an immediate fugitive.
Therefore, though it's very kind of the Crown Prosecution Service to accept this explanation at trial, why did they wait before it was up before a judge with all the attendant publicity before letting him off the hook?
In the minds of some people as well, there's going to be an attitude of "that's right, blame it on the computer - he would say that, wouldn't he?". Technology-based defences simply don't hold water for a lot of non-technical people - which with the increasing number of technological offences being put to juries is quite a worry.
So, this guy will still be stigmatised as a paedophile, all for the price of some virus checking software...
I gotta keep this short 'cause I have to go uninstall Symantec Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition to make sure that my company lawyers have a good defense for some of our employees.... Hell, I might just turn off our firewall and load MS Backoffice for an OS as long as we're looking to give more people/programs easy access.
My brother called me one day to say that his new computer had run out of disk space and he didn't know why. I connected to his computer via Remote Desktop and browsed his folder and when I got to his My Music directory it was full of 7 gigs of movie files, none of which he had seen before. I deleted them and suggested he get a firewall program.
Sure enough, as soon as he got his firewall up he got a slew of alerts about people trying to connect to his computer. I make sure I keep my firewall up at all times now.
Once again, sorry for bleating like a dying, clubbed baby seal, but I felt that I should add that although I don't have any links that I can think of right now DIRECTLY on the subject, I would like to direct you to a series of essays on kuro5hin.org, written by a man living with schizoaffective disorder. Although it probably won't change your viewpoints, perhaps upon reading about some of this guy's experiences, you'll have a building block to construct a more enlightened philosophy of justice and of mental disorder.
Yes officer, the lock on my front door has been broken for a few weeks now. That body is in the basement because some bastard probably dropped it off there while I was at work
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
I find it entirely feasible that a person would not notice a large amount of files added to their computer. Not all people know their computer well enough to notice image files being added onto their hard drive - particularly if added to a system directory or somewhere a casual user doesn't normally peruse. Take OS X for example - I could load tons of files into the /var directory. To see the contents of /var on a normally configured OS X machine you have to go to the terminal or specifically configure the file browser (Finder) to make those type of directories visible. On my Windows 2000 machine at work I cannot browse the WINNT directory unless I click on Show Files (after reading the "This isn't the directory you're looking for. Move along now." warning). I'm 99.99% sure that I could add a gig of porn to my parents hard drive and they would never be the wiser.
Because those of us at Slashdot are more technically adept and let's face it - our computers are a major part of our day-to-day life - we assume incorrectly that everyday people are more capable with their computers and see them more than just a box that balances their checkbook.
2001-12-25 02:34:02 Porn trojan virus? (articles,security) (rejected)
I've seen and disinfected a laptop of a friend who was infected with a virus that downloaded porn pages in the background whenever he connected to the internet. I guess it was to collect link credits. His history and cache would fill up with porn crap and he claimed to not be visiting the sites. At first I didn't believe him (obviously) and was surprised when I saw the behavior for myself. Beware!
I see a lot of comments about - wink, wink - sure it was the virus, or dumb ass for executing a Trojan.
My first lesson with an improperly configured Linux box outside the firewall was when my ISP called asking about some insane bandwidth use. What? I checked the box and it seemed fine. Found out the traffic was on FTP, which I was not using. Sure enough, tons of porn and other files were getting uploaded and downloaded... all the files in a hidden directory. The box was owned, and I ended up rebuilding from scratch, this time leaving services off I did not actually use and patching some of the services I did. Than I discovered ssh and a few other key insights that were new to me.
I cannot believe I am the only one this kind of thing happened to...
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
I didn't notice the folder named "Child Porn" and all the neatly arranged subfolders inside of "My Documents".
I imagine many of you have used P2P apps like KaZaA. I'd bet money that almost all of you even downloaded some porn with it. Don't be bashful. There's nothing wrong with it. However I'm sure you too have noticed the overwhelming amount of BS crap files that get turned up in searches. Many of them say "underaged" or "pre-teens" or many other things that indicate a minor child. And many of them are pure junk and are simply pictures ripped from a Girls Gone Wild video. However some times you end up downloading a picture you just can't identify. You really can't tell if those are kids, flat-chested and baby-faced college seniors, or midgets. If you don't delete these files and leave them on your computer, are you now guilty of having child pornography if someone proves that the picture you downloaded 1 year ago and is still in you junk directory?
Lets say for example that your ex knows you have porn on your computer. Hell she and you used to watch it together. You break up with her and she's pissed. She makes an anonymous call to the police one night when drunk. The next day and overzealous police officer has a warrant from a judge looking for some good PR for the election coming up. They confiscate your computer and arrest you, even though all they have as proof is the anonymous tip. A lab goes through your hard drives and CDs while you're grilled by a cop with bad breath over how you abuse children. You don't want to call for a lawyer because you don't want to seem guilty. You think it's all a big mistake. The lab boys come back with the porn. The cops browse through it. A picture comes up of Devon in her early years. "Does she look like a minor to you, Bob?" "She sure looks like a minor to me, Chuck." They arrest you and charge you with child pornography, even though they have confirmed that the person in the photo is a minor. The PD and DAs office goes public to say how they've arrested a vile child pornographer. Media coverage. Citizen outrage at him. yadda yadda yadda. In the meantime he's arrained. This gives an assistant DA time to go through all the porn on the hard drive. Whoops. It turns out that the photo the cops thought was child porn wasn't. Hell it obviously wasn't. Damn overzealous cops. Nevertheless he goes through all the porn. He even enlists the help of a person in the pornography business who can recognize many of his fellow actors. Finally they come down to a small handful of pictures that no one can identify. Of these 3 could be of a minor. The DA picks the most child-like photo as proof and goes to trial. The prosecution paints the defendant as a vile, horrible child pornographer. A few of his ex-girlfriends step into the lime light to say how he was abusive or was obsessed with kids or some other bullshit like that. The defense lays out the facts of law and that the photo can't