Defense in Porn Case Hires Computer Expert
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By DIANA GRAETTINGER; OF THE NEWS STAFF  MACHIAS - A 4th District Court judge gave a court-appointed defense attorney permission to hire a local computer expert in a case involving a man who faces multiple charges of possession of sexually explicit material.
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A German computer security firm has defended its decision to hire the self-confessed author of the Sasser worm.
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(InfoWorld) - A California attorney claims he has unraveled part of the mystery behind a questionable software program and is prepared to go to court. Attorney Joseph M. Bochner filed a class-action civil suit last September in California Superior Court in Santa Clara County against two men the suit alleges are behind Winfixer, a purported security software. The lawsuit names Marc J. Cohen of Florida, and was amended last week to add James Reno of Ohio as an additional defendant, Bochner said. It seeks compensation and a halt to the distribution of Winfixer, among other remedies. The suit was filed on behalf of Beatrice Ochoa, a mother of two who paid US$39.95 for Winfixer after it badgered her with repeated pop-up warnings that her computer had security threats. The program eventually rendered her computer's hard drive unusable, Bochner said. The suit counts another 100 anonymous victims. "All of these people are being defrauded and they're just ordinary folks," Bochner said. "They buy a computer, they surf the Internet, they're not doing anything unreasonable and suddenly they're defrauded." Indecision over whether Winfixer is a legitimate product may be the reason it still pervades the Internet. Winfixer has been a moving target for security experts, at times going by the names ErrorSafe, WinAntiSpyware, WinAntiVirus, SystemDoctor and DriveCleaner. Security software from vendors such as Sophos PLC and Symantec Corp. will detect it, but give users the option of whether they want to remove it. Sophos calls it "adware" that hypes security threats and then implores users to buy the software. Microsoft Corp., however, pulled no punches last month whenÂ Winfixer ads began show up on its instant-messaging program, calling it "malware," a shorter term for "malicious software." Experts have also seen it install itself on computers via security vulnerabilities in browsers or OSes. However, the lawsuit could face hurdles in court. Web sites are frequently registered under false names or under stolen identifies and the real owners can be difficult to trace, said Sandi Hardmeier, a computer security authority who writes about Winfixer on her blog "Spyware Sucks." Proving the link to the alleged perpetrators, their connections to Winfixer all the way through to the effects on Ochoa's computer will be very difficult, she said. "Forensics is everything," she said. Bochner acknowledges it's hard work to track down fraudsters who use the Internet's anonymity to commit crimes, but the criminals are real people who can be located. Bochner said he has compelling documentation to link the defendants named in the suit to Winfixer. By researching IP (Internet Protocol) addresses that hosted the versions of Winfixer and their owners, Bochner alleges he has uncovered a fraud based in the U.S. that has escaped law enforcement scrutiny. Reno ran a Web hosting company called ByteHosting Internet Service LLC with a postal address in Amelia, Ohio. Bochner said at one time, a support number for Winfixer support also rang through to ByteHosting, which led in part to Reno being added to the suit. Reno, along with other co-defendants and ByteHosting, was sued by Symantec Corp. in 2004 for allegedly creating pop-up ads that told consumers their Symantec software was about to expire. The ads then directed users to fake software that looked similar to Symantec products. Court records show Reno and Symantec reached a confidential settlement in December 2004. Cohen was named for his connections with vipfares.com, a now-defunct travel Web site, Bochner said. At one time, the Winfixer software would hijack the user's browser and suddenly show vipfares.com, he said. Efforts to reach Cohen and Reno for comment were unsuccessful on Wednesday and Thursday. However, Cohen's attorney, Judy Silverstein, appeared on a San Francisco TV news program on Feb. 26 regarding Winfixer and her client. Silverstein said, "His [Cohen's] position is he's done nothing wrong. He's done nothing improper or illegal, and he's had no ownership interested in those Web sites." Bochner said he has turned over some of his research to law enforcement agencies such as the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and Secret Service along with California authorities. While researching IP addresses that linked to Winfixer, Bochner said he suddenly came upon a database detailing sales of Winfixer and the other versions of the programs. The multi-gigabyte database -- apparently left unsecured and open to the Internet -- contained names, addresses, credit-card numbers, transaction amounts and the version of Winfixer that was sold, he said. For example, on Jan. 20, 2006, the data showed 2,351 sales to users worldwide, with an average transaction amount of $40, Bochner said. The database covers transactions made from January 2005 through January 2006. One of the records shows a transaction made by someone who lives across the street from his law office, Bochner said. The data, while incomplete, allows a view of the fraud ring's broad reach and scope, he said. "I think this is far larger than anyone has ever expected," Bochner said. "It's not inconceivable that these people have made $150 million or more over the last few years." Â
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Suspect accused of stealing and distributing source code over the Internet.
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Web pornmonger demands unpaid commission
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A lawyer specializing in freedom of speech and the Internet said Wednesday he will defend free of charge a 19-year-old publisher of a Web site facing a lawsuit over an article that revealed trade secrets about an Apple computer.
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Computer security experts and law enforcement officials need standards for the network forensics that are becoming common in trial cases.
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Justice Department attorneys, defending a law aimed at keeping online pornography from minors, argued that software filters often block valid sites &#151; on gay rights or sexual health, for example &#151; that teens might seek out.
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A California-based pornographer said on Monday it has sued Google Inc. , alleging that its leading Internet search engines are illegally allowing people to view hijacked versions of its nude photos and to access its Web site with stolen passwords.
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Forensic Technology's system lets investigators analyze evidence over a network.
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A well-known director and producer of adult films has been indicted on obscenity charges for distributing his movies online and through the mail, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Thursday.
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By The Sun, Yuma, Ariz.  Jun. 9--The first full day of testimony in the trial of a Yuma man suspected of having child pornography on his computer got under way Friday.   Bryan Joseph Larson, 32, of 10677 Shale Drive, has been charged with 11 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor.
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An FBI consultant tells trial jurors an al-Qaeda recruiting video was found on a terrorist suspect's computer.
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Useful evidence may have been destroyed when a laptop was switched on, a terror trial hears.
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By Lawrence Mower  By LAWRENCE MOWER  REVIEW-JOURNAL  The former 32-year flute professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, accused of possessing more than 26,000 images of child pornography waived his right to a preliminary hearing Monday.
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Defense attorneys for Scott Peterson have begun their counterattack, starting with a concrete expert whose testimony poked holes in a prosecution theory that Peterson
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Brad Willman was installing networking equipment out of an emergency van in British Columbia when a policeman showed up and asked for him. Willman knew the officer from a case he was involved with a couple of years earlier, so he didn&#39;t worry -- until he arrived at the police station and was introduced to a couple of U.S. cops.The visit marked the end of Willman&#39;s version of vigilante justice.A Trojan Horse Used For GoodIt was 2000, and Willman was 19. He had spent the last few years surreptitiously distributing a Trojan horse program to more than 1,000 people to try to uncover child-porn activities. All told, Willman said his work sent around 70 people to prison.But then Willman stumbled on a prominent California judge. He discovered that Ronald Kline, at the time a superior court judge in Orange County, had a big collection of child porn and a diary on his PC indicating he was planning to try to seduce young boys. The high-profile case put an end to Willman&#39;s career as a crime-fighter.&quot;Oh, I knew it was illegal,&quot; Willman said in a recent phone&#160;interview. &quot;But I really didn&#39;t care. I felt if I&#39;m helping a few people in the process, cool.&quot; Until Kline, Willman had managed to stay anonymous.The Origins of the ProgramWillman didn&#39;t initially set out to chase child pornographers. He started out developing a program designed to compete with pcAnywhere, Symantec&#39;s software that lets users access computers remotely.But then, while discussing programming on various newsgroups, he had a conversation with a Canadian man who offered his six-year-old daughter to Willman.&quot;That was an awkward scenario,&quot; Willman says, putting it mildly.Willman quickly contacted the police, who were able to prosecute the Edmonton man, he said.&quot;He&#39;s more or less what altered my mind from competing with pcAnywhere to making a Trojan to see who else is doing this,&quot; he said.Willman used the work he&#39;d already developed on the program to trick suspected pedophiles into unknowingly downloading the software so that he could get proof from their computers.How Willman Used the Trojan HorseWillman would visit child-porn newsgroups and post his program as a file that looked like it contained a photo. In order to avoid suspicion, Willman built in an additional feature. When the program launched without opening a photo, he designed it so that the first time it loaded it would display any photo from the directory to the user.After someone downloaded the software, Willman could look through their files remotely for illicit documents or photos.Once he found damning information, he&#39;d copy and share it with various child-porn watchdog groups, who could then pursue the perpetrators.Everything changed when Kline downloaded the Trojan and Willman found damning evidence on the judge&#39;s computer.Willman passed the information on to one of the watchdog groups as usual and figured that was that -- until the day the police showed up while he was at work.The police from the U.S. told him that they found him through correspondence sent from his computer to one of the watchdog groups.While the police were initially friendly because Willman was able to give them additional information on Kline, they later told him that if he does any more hacking, ever, they&#39;ll arrest him. Willman signed an agreement that he wouldn&#39;t hack and that he wouldn&#39;t have anything to do with child porn.Legal Barriers to Willman&#39;s VigilantismVarious state and federal laws in the U.S. criminalize unauthorized access to computers, said Jeff Neuburger, an attorney specializing in technology at Thelen Reid Brown Raysman &amp; Steiner, an international law firm based in New York City. If Willman hadn&#39;t agreed to the deal with the police, he could have been charged with violating state or federal laws. But even in that case, so long as he didn&#39;t set foot in the U.S., it would have been difficult for American authorities to prosecute him, Neuburger said.He&#39;s seeing more and more cases like Willman&#39;s, where people are using the Internet to accomplish good, but sometimes with questionable means. &quot;In the U.S., prosecutors are careful not to let something like this go without sending a message that what the person did was wrong,&quot; he said. &quot;But they may not aggressively seek a severe sentence or punishment.&quot;One problem with vigilante work like Willman&#39;s is that someone might make a mistake and affect innocent people, Neuburger warned. HadWillman wrongly accused someone, he could have faced much bigger legal problems. &quot;It&#39;s a dangerous thing,&quot; he said.Retiring the TrojanHis days in the spotlight behind him, Willman, now 27, lives with his parents in Langley, B.C., where he does phone tech support for a small cable company. He does computer repair on the side and dreams of becoming a computer security researcher.As for Kline, he was sentenced earlier this year to 27 months in prison, a sentence that Willman called &quot;reasonable.&quot;Once in a while, Willman still gets a request from someone asking for his help in busting someone involved with child porn. He can only refer them to the watchdog groups he was familiar with.&quot;I would like to help these people get their kids in a better position, but I can&#39;t because the type of research I&#39;d have to do is stuff I&#39;m not allowed to do anymore,&quot; he said.Even though Willman knew his actions were illegal, he didn&#39;t consider the consequences. &quot;I thought I covered my tracks pretty well,&quot; he said.&quot;And I did until the Judge Kline thing. I didn&#39;t really think I&#39;d get busted.&quot;