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Kiddie Porn - The Virus Did It
The New York Times reports on a British man who was accused of downloading child pornography, and who successfully convinced the court that a virus did it. This is at least the second time this has happened. These cases are extremely interesting since they bring together all sorts of issues of computerized agents - who is actually responsible when your computer does something?
Here
You do realize that things are not news just because they appear in the oft-cited NYT. This case for instance came to conclusion on July 17 and the BBC covered it two weeks ago.
There are spammers/pr0no pages that try to get you to install a "porn downloader" ActiveX control. (If the security settings in IE are really bad [default?] IE might just suck it down for you.) Then it changes your Internet connection to a dial-up via an expensive (900-type or long-distance) connection. No doubt it installs various backdoors too.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Subject says it all.
As a former abuse admin at an ISP, I actually find his story pretty plausible. It's been common for a couple of years now for Outlook/Outlook Express worms to have their own SMTP engine for propagating themselves. "Special viewers" from "free" pr0n sites that disconnect a dialup connection and dial back to a 900 number or similar in an offshore location have been around since the early days of the commercial Internet. They're apparently a huge problem in Japan, because Japanese long distance companies were for a long time (and could still be) including warnings about that scam along with their bills.
There are countless varieties of peer-to-peer networking programs out there. Lots of spyware, too.
In other words, all the technology to create a worm that will, upon installing itself, set up to dial the Internet, harvest child pornography, and make it available to other zombies with the same program, is already on the shelf. All some sicko has to do is assemble it and release it in the wild. I find it entirely plausible that someone already has. Very disturbing, but plausible.
Didn't know that they did computer forensic work as well. Sensible, considering their other talents.
Help children born unable to swallow - www.tofs.org.uk
Technical issues aside, there can only be one advice: If confronted with any kind of child pornography, or even being offered such - inform the cops.
This kind of stuff is illegal in almost any jurisdiction worldwide, and it is immoral by all but the sickest standards. There is also no argument that children are exploitet for this, and suffering from it.
Chase spammers for fun all day, more power to you! But do not collect evidence on child porn, leave that to professionals.
And again, in most jurisdictions, law enforcement _will_ act on your tip.
Alex
Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder
Mod the parent up. I live in Japan and KNOW that this hits home. The Japanese goverment has been suspiciously lax in pursuing enactment of Child Porn laws (Cyber or otherwise) ispite of heavy pressure from US and many European countries. I would say that Japan and Thailand are responsible for most of the Child porn being generated worldwide.
Check your BIOS setup, especially wake-up time.
PC's have had this feature for a long time, so it's not totally impossible, just highly improbable to implement correctly due to buggy BIOS implementations etc.
I pretty much agree.
Possession of an illegal copy of something does not encourage its production. Just ask the RIAA. ;-)
Seriously, though. If enforcement eliminated the sources of revenue for child porn (actually paying for it and placing ads with it) then there wouldn't be money to exploit the childen with.
The problem with trying to enforce on the basis of possession is that a typical desktop owner can easily be shown to be unaware of vast portions of their hard drives. I'm sure expert testimony can be found on this, hard drive manufacturers look forward to it to sell more and bigger drvies.
Intentional lawbreakers will quickly learn to leave all of their questionable material encrypted. Lacking the password, law enforcement will be unable to press charges. Are you going to convict everyone who has an encrypted archive with a forgotten password?
Intentional lawbreakers are also fully capable of deliberately planting evidence on others' computers. They don't even have to have directed malice, just the knowledge that enough innocent victims will provide them cover.
Placing ads and using credits cards are still intentional acts that a person is responsible for. Enforcement should concentrate there, and forget about searching hard drives.
Finally, do you really think that there is a 'wrong button' out there that will dl large numbers of images on to your machine? If so, imo, you're some kind of fool.
You're an idiot. I've downloaded tons of kiddie pr0n by accident because some fucker mislabels his posts, or posts to newsgroups meant strictly for over 18 models. You never know what it is till you download it these days. Not to mention the dickheads on P2P networks who get their jollies by mislabeling anything from trojans to viruses to child / animal porno as something somebody would actually download.
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
When I was sharing a house, we had a P-233mmx which was shared between several of the occupants, running windows 9x. After using the thing for some time, the machine began to slow down, behave oddly, and then a few other odd things started to occur; the mouse moved strangely - and then the machine started to type things. By itself. It was fairly obviously some sort of remote control program (either trojan or maliciously stuck on there by one of my housemates) - which started to do other odd things.
Including displaying child pornography on the screen.
The first time this happened, I had the willies scared out of me as my 14 inch monitor was suddenly filled with an image of a girl of a similar age to the size of my monitor, barely dressed, obviously looking up at a taller photographer. It petrified and disgusted me so much that for a moment I didn't move - before I promptly turned the machine off at the mains and gutted it. I couldn't work out what had caused it - and no virus software picked the thing up. Thank god it was a shared computer, or I'd have never used the net again, I think - in the following months the above happened on a monthly basis, and every now and then the bootup screen changed to an image of a fly on windows background, with the label "ISpyFly Windows {something I forget}".
To this day, I have NO idea what the software was that caused it, but of one thing I'm certain - child pornography *can* get onto your computer without your consent or knowledge. No-one knows better than I how much paedophilia goes on online - I worked in computer forensics - but all the same, there are *two* sides to this coin, in whatever proportions they occur.
Incidentally, if anyone's heard of the software or has any idea what it was, let me know. And no, I don't still have access to the machine. It wasn't mine anyway.
I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you
Being a close friend of the the man's son, Alex Green, I can attest that his story is true - but there is more to it than that. Mr Green's older daughter (14 at the time, I think) had a vendetta against him for several years. She was the one who reported it to the police, and most of the Green family believe she put the porn on there to incriminate him. Of course Mr Green wouldn't testify against his own daughter, although he doesn't consider her a daughter any more...
"Studies have shown that people who eat peanuts live longer than those who do not eat."
It may be an obvious response, but I believe it stilll holds true:
Girlfriend? Yeah, right buddy! Did you forget where you're posting? You're posting on _Slashdot_!
Unfortunately those who should know about computers don't. Former CIA head John Deutch was found to be using his non-secured home PC to store sensitive government files, despite the fact that the CIA set him up with a secured PC at home. This is the former freakin' head of state intelligence for the US. He probably isn't a total idiot, but his lack of computer savvy extends to most of the population.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
For some reason I think you are confusing child pornography with the *HOT HOT TEENS TEENS* mails that everyone receives every once in a while. If I'd receive spam for child pornography I'd make damn sure that that account is killed off, and my mailclient is squeeky clean of "backup" files.
Entrapment from who? The government? The law? If someone plans on sending you child pornography as an elaborate skeem to get you in jail, then you have made an enemy of someone in ways that I'd never like to make enemies.
"Oh, and look, he's also a collector of viagra ads, herbs that increase stamina, and Nigerian business opportunities..." Please, I think that law enforcement agencies are more active in finding people who actively distribute and download child pornography than this.
I think I found the trick to getting a positive score on slashdot. Just say that you disagree with moderators, and they'll mod you up like crazy, even if you're producing drivel.