Yesterday, I mentioned a couple of computer viruses that scared me and discussed one that hijacks your computer and deposits kiddie porn. Today's virus looks for child pornography on your computer!
A computer virus that was possibly intended to perform a public service, raises legal questions and seems sure to fuel the debate over computer privacy.
This virus, VBS.Noped.a, searches the target's machine for what it suspects may be child pornography and reports the names of files to the police. There are no reports of police officials acting on this kind of results as of yet. Antivirus software companies say it has not yet been distributed widely.
This virus was spotted by computer security companies back in May 2001. It arrived as an attachment to an e-mail message titled, ''FWD: Help us ALL to END ILLEGAL child porn NOW.'' When the recipient opened the attachment, child pornography statutes appeared on screen. The program then searched the user's hard drive for picture files that have pornographic-sounding names and then sent an e-mail message and a list of suspect files to a law enforcement agency picked at random from the program's database.
The message sent to the police said:: ''Hi, 'This is Antipedo2001. I have found a PC with known child pornography files on the hard drive. I have included a listing below and included a sample for your convenience.''
The virus also sent out copies of itself to addresses in the victim's e-mail address book.
Besides the program's invasive nature, the virus's search software was apt to falsely identify files as containing child pornography solely based on the filename. Police acting on these false results would cause irreparable harm to innocent computer owners.
Law enforcement agencies cannot search an individual's computer without a warrant, but they can and do use anonymous tips as part of their probable cause. A Justice Department lawyer said that law enforcement officials could legally conduct a search based on the tip, but added, ''That's a very different question from 'would law enforcement ever open an investigation based on that information?' ''
Perhaps the most troubling aspect of this is the havoc that the virus could wreak on the reputation of people with no involvement in child pornography.
There is no limit as to how far this information could spread. Local news organizations could receive information and report that a parent was under investigation as a for certain sex crimes. All this would be the result of an unwarranted and illegal entry to your private computer.
There were no known filtering-analysis programs that could accurately determine whether an image is of child pornography when this virus first appeared back in 2001. Now we have better methods for detecting child pornography based on hash marks and registered images.
Scary stuff!
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