CyberPorn Extortion
“Cyber blackmail artists are shaking down office workers, threatening to delete computer files or install pornographic images on their work PCs unless they pay a ransom… The extortion scam, which is believed to have surfaced one year ago, indiscriminately targets anyone on the corporate ladder with a PC connected to the Internet. It usually starts with a threatening e-mail in which the author claims to have the power to take over a worker’s computer through an exploit in the corporate network, experts said. The e-mail typically contains a demand that unless a small fee is paid — at first no more than $20 or $30 — they will attack the PC with a file-wiping program or download onto the machine images of child pornography.” — Houston Chronicle (US)
This sort of extortion raises a lot of the same issues as kiddie-porn viruses. You can imagine people getting arrested for possession of child pornography and blaming it on mysterious cyber-extortionists from Estonia. “It was planted on my PC! I’m being blackmailed!”
In fact, faux-extortion could become the new distribution model for kiddie porn. Rather than download it from web sites or newsgroups, people who want kiddie porn will let it be known that they want to be victims of “extortion.” Then the distributors — for a fee, of course — will email them a virus that downloads a bunch of porn. If investigators track the finances, people can always claim that the fee was not something they paid in order to obtain kiddie porn, but rather a kind of ransom they paid to the extortionists to leave them alone.
All that being said, there is not really much evidence of this extortion actually happening. There was a Scandinavian university that received threatening emails, but they appeared to be a bluff. If anything like this really happens, it is more likely to occur as a result of personal grudges — not an anonymous hacker putting kiddie porn on your PC, but a malicious coworker doing it in an effort to get you fired.
If I had a vicious co-worker that did that to me, I would soooo kick his ass! I would also slash his or her tires! Who would do that? It would be good that you could prove that it wasn’t you when the boss comes around. There should be a way to prove someone’s innocence so lives aren’t destroyed!
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