A malware may plant child porn images on your PC
By siliconindia   |   Wednesday, 11 November 2009, 15:10 IST   |    11 Comments
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A malware may plant child porn images on your PC
Bangalore: Now-a-days viruses are being used to plant child pornography on people's computers without their knowledge. Recently, Michael Fiola, a former Massachusetts state employee's computer was found containing child pornography images. He was fired and charged with possession of child pornography. Ultimately, charges were dropped after Fiola's defense showed that his computer was infected by a virus that was programmed to visit as many as 40 child porn sites per minute, something that a human couldn't do, even if he or she tried. Other reports about this case indicate that the antivirus software on Fiola's computer was out of date and therefore was not protecting him against malware. Sexually explicit images of children, who are often being exploited, are not protected by the First Amendment because they may memorialize, celebrate or encourage sexual crimes against children deemed defenseless victims. Although Fiola avoided a child porn conviction, he reportedly has suffered related indignities, including death threats and friend abandonment. The AP reported that he and his wife liquidated their savings and spent $250,000 on legal fees. Being accused of possessing child pornography can ruin people's reputations, confront them with overwhelming legal bills and, if convicted, deprive them of their freedom for years if sentenced to prison time, and perhaps for life, if they're required to register as sex offenders. The question arises is that if viruses are capable of putting illegal content on people's computers, aren't all the internet users at risk of being arrested for serious crimes they never meant to commit? Even security experts agreed that it is indeed possible for malicious software to plant child pornography or any other type of file. Marian Merritt, Spokeswoman, Symantec said, "It's quite possible for a malware creator to include child pornography as part of the payload on an infected computer, but such payloads are not typical." Some experts say that the investigators can usually figure out if an image was downloaded intentionally, based on other activity that took place on the computer at the time. Michael Geraghty, Executive Director of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children Technology Services Division said, "Investigators can tell the difference between someone who deliberately downloaded such images and someone who may have inadvertently downloaded perhaps thousands of images because of a virus or misdirected web site." As with any other security issue, the best defense is to protect our machine against intrusions. This includes, make sure that our operating system (OS) and regularly used software are up-to-date, using good software addressing malware, phishing attacks, and/or spam, and keeping it up to date, subscriptions to paid programs should be renewed and being cautious about spam and about providing information to sites anyone navigates to from links within even the most legitimate-appearing e-mails.

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