Ejovi Nuwere

Yesterday someone said to me “I keep getting hacked, I fixed the problem with my anti-virus software but I keep getting hacked.” After a bit of questioning, it became clear that he hadn’t heard about the Windows worm that’s spreading across the Internet causing more trouble then a Whitehouse Intern. So if you are running Windows here is where you can find the fix.

Now if my colorful analogy doesn’t convince you to download and install the security fix, maybe the story of Julian Green will, Mr. Green was framed by hackers who placed child pornography on his home PC.


I originally came across the case in the NY Times. As the story goes, Mr. Green was arrested for possessing child pornography. In fact, he did have child porn on his computer; this was never in dispute. His defense was that hackers broke into his computer and stored it on his system without his knowledge. The prosecutors and defense attorneys hired third party computer experts who in turn verified that he indeed had been hacked, multiple times.

His computer had a plethora of backdoors that allowed hackers to gain access to his system remotely. This meant that Mr. Green did not have complete control over his system, so how could he be held liable for what was stored on it?

Did hackers download pictures onto his computer? It couldn’t be proven they did, but it couldn’t be proven they didn’t and so he was set free. Reasonable doubt.

This is the first criminal case in which someone was set free because their computer had been hacked, though it happened in Britain it has set a precedent that is sure to influence the future of crimes involving computers.

Unless you want to be the first person to test this precedent in America I suggest you download the fix.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 13th, 2003 at 12:00 am and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.