Trojan horse leads to porn convictions

Found on CNet News on Friday, 25 August 2006
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In early 2000, a computer hacker who used the now-defunct e-mail address unknownuser1069@hotmail.com seeded a Usenet newsgroup called alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.pre-teen with a clever bit of malicious Windows software.

On July 16, 2000, "1069" sent e-mail to the Montgomery, Ala., Police Department saying, "I found a child molester on the Net."

At the urging of Montgomery Police Capt. Kevin Murphy, "1069" eventually turned over more and more information that led back to a computer owned by Bradley Joseph Steiger, who had worked as an emergency room physician in Alabama. The hacker's finds included information from Steiger's AT&T WorldNet account, records from his checking account, and a list of directories on his computer's hard drive where sexually explicit photographs were stored.

A year later, "1069" fingered another man, William Adderson Jarrett, who lived in the Richmond, Va., area. He again contacted Murphy, who started an investigation that led to Jarrett's arrest.

Instead of informing "1069" that he was committing federal felonies and should cease immediately, Murphy and the FBI encouraged the hacker to continue. The FBI wrote "1069" in January 2002: "The FACT still stands that you are not a citizen of the United States and are not bound by our laws. Our federal attorneys have expressed NO desire to charge you with any CRIMINAL offense. You have not hacked into any computer at the request of the FBI or other law (enforcement) agency. You have not acted as an agent for the FBI or other law enforcement agency. Therefore, the information you have collected can be used in our criminal trials."

There we have it again: questionable means versus results. In a country where hacking can bring you into jail for up to 20 years, officials encourage a foreign hacker to continue spying on US citizens. 1069 was not present in the trials, although everything was caused by his actions. Some people also raised the question if nobody asked whether the "evidence" was perhaps planted by 1069 himself.