Computer virus makes you an unwitting child porn collector

Talk about horrifying: A growing trend in the computer malware world involves viruses and other exploits that turn your PC into an unwitting haven for child pornography.

Having your credit card numbers or even your identity stolen are bad, but if you're caught with child porn on your computer, you could be facing hard time. That's exactly what has happened in more than one case when an innocent person, their computer infested with pornography downloaded by malware without their knowledge, has risked imprisonment for the crimes of someone else. In the case of Michael Fiola, the man had to spend $250,000 defending himself when his laptop became infected with malware, causing it to visit "as many as 40 child porn sites per minute." It took nearly a year for the case to be dropped, and Fiola now considers his life to be ruined by the ordeal.

For hackers, it makes perfect sense to hijack other people's computers to do their dirty work for them. Even a hint of underage pornography on a computer can lead to serious consequences for those caught with it, so why not just infect someone else's machine and store your illegal stash there? (The files can even be viewed and managed remotely via remote access tools -- the linked story above refers to this as turning infected PCs into "a warehouse for pictures and videos.") The hacker never has to compromise his own hard drive with the contraband at all... but the unsuspecting can be devastated by it.

SFGate notes that it's easy to pooh-pooh the "I have a virus" defense, but we do so at our own risk: "It's an example of the old `dog ate my homework' excuse," says Phil Malone, director of the Cyberlaw Clinic at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society. "The problem is, sometimes the dog does eat your homework."

Prosecutors even call it "the SODDI defense: Some Other Dude Did It." And in general it's been ineffective. Many a defendant remains behind bars, unable to convince a jury that he wasn't the one that put the pictures on his computer.

There's only one thing you can do to protect yourself, and that's ensure that your computer is secure and up-to-date with its malware protections. File-sharing programs appear to be exceptionally apt at being carriers for this kind of stuff, so use peer-to-peer apps with extreme caution.