| Submit your comments on this article |
| Britain |
| UK: Trojan horse downloads child porn on victim’s computer |
| 2003-08-04 |
| Edited for brevity. Hat tip InstaPundit--OT, but disturbing for any computer user (e.g. you!). A man accused of storing child pornography on his computer has been cleared after it emerged that his computer had been infected by a Trojan horse, which was responsible for transferring the images onto his PC. Julian Green, 45, was taken into custody last October after police with a search warrant raided his house. He then spent a night in a police cell, nine days in Exeter prison and three months in a bail hostel. During this time, his ex-wife won custody of his seven year old daughter and possession of his house. This is thought to be the second case in the UK where a "Trojan defence" has been used to clear someone of such an accusation. In April, a man from Reading was found not guilty of the crime after experts testified that a Trojan could have been responsible for the presence of 14 child porn images on his PC. Three questions come to mind after reading this disturbing article: 1) What justification did the police have for a warrant? 2) Who stood to benefit (the ex-wife certainly did) from making an anonymous tip? 3) How widespread is this? It certainly appears targeted, not random, if only two people have been affected--that they know of, anyway. |
| Posted by:Dar |
| #5 AT: Don't need a search warrant?! What sort of police state do you think the UK is? It actually states in the article "police with a search warrant". |
| Posted by: Bulldog 2003-8-5 4:20:31 AM |
| #4 Re: 3 questions 1.) This is the UK not US; they don't need a search warrant. 2.) Obviously, the ex stood to gain, but sometimes the answer is not obvious 3.)Probably much more widespread than has been reported The best defense against computer hackers and terrorists alike is common sense (which, regretably, isn't all that common). |
| Posted by: Anonymous Troll 2003-8-4 11:57:28 PM |
| #3 Don - Thx for the link... The operation of the trojan (migmaf? WTF?) is, indeed, interesting. P2P file-swapping apps like Kazaa, and before it Napster and 3 or 4 others, are rife with shitheads spreading viral files and pgms. Remember one of the first such gambits, AOLFree, about 7 yrs ago? Burned a LOT of people and it was a real bitch virus: a disk-wiper. Good article - Thx, again. |
| Posted by: ·com 2003-8-4 6:16:22 PM |
| #2 Actually, this stuff has already been reported in professional papers and sites - New trojan peddles porn while you work |
| Posted by: Don 2003-8-4 5:43:08 PM |
| #1 Good questions. This just doesn't make sense as a random event. What are the odds of visiting a particular pernicious website out of the millions? Being drawn there - by an email, perhaps? I write webapps - and the user's machine is more open than many would like to believe, so doing something like this isn't impossible - it's just improbable as hell. Lessee, back to the cop's creed: Motive, Means... |
| Posted by: ·com 2003-8-4 4:59:42 PM |