What your PC might be downloading behind your back …

While sowing even more paranoia about the Internet is probably not needed, Jordan Robertson’s AP story this weekend, “Framed for child porn – by a PC virus” does merit attention. The idea here is simple. Personal computers connected to the Internet may be clandestinely hijacked to store child pornography. Unfortunately, if the PC is poorly managed and protected (i.e. patches out of date and without anti-virus software), for someone with the right skills, it’s painfully easy to do. For the innocent, remedy of damages will likely be time consuming and expensive, if possible at all.

As Robertson states, “Of all the sinister things that Internet viruses do, this might be the worst: They can make you an unsuspecting collector of child pornography.” This is no joke. Almost nothing can trash a reputation more quickly than allegations of viewing or storage of child porn.

Connected to the Internet, PCs are all too often wide open targets. The infrastructure of Internet-connected PCs is inherently insecure. According to ShadowServer.org, as many 400,000 PCs may at any time be zombie “bots” effectively under the control of a party other than their authorized users. They can be used to send spam e-mail, overwhelm computer networks, purloin sensitive data or even store and serve up pornography. All too often, PC owners have no idea what their computers are up to.

Cybercrime, from digital theft to media piracy, is still growing and our legal system is poorly equipped to handle it. Knowing who is a cyber pedophile and who has merely been duped can be ridiculously hard for prosecutors or a jury to determine. As long as so many PCs are so vulnerable, this problem will not be going away.

Christopher Bronk is the Baker Institute fellow in technology, society and public policy. He previously served as a career diplomat with the United States Department of State on assignments both overseas and in Washington, D.C.