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| A 45-year-old man has been arrested after
reportedly using a Trojan horse to spy on a young woman via her
webcam. |
A 45-year-old man from Cyprus, has been arrested in connection
with hacking a teenage girl's webcam, in order to take illicit
pictures of the young woman in her bedroom.
The man, who has not been named, is alleged to have spied on the
17-year-old girl through her webcam after infecting her PC with a
Trojan horse. According to police reports, the suspect - who is a
computer technician based in Nicosia -is said to have taken
compromising pictures of the teenager while she was alone in her
bedroom, and threatened to send the pictures to her email contacts
unless she stood naked in front of the webcam. The girl refused and
contacted the police.
It is alleged that the Trojan horse infected the PC after it was
sent as an email attachment to the unwitting victim.
"The last 12 months have seen a dramatic rise in the number of
new viruses, worms and Trojan horses designed to spy on innocent
users: whether it be via their webcam, intercepting emails, or
monitoring keypresses to grab banking passwords. Sophos's labs
analyse approximately 15 new pieces of malware which include this
kind of sinister payload every day, compared to 5 a day a year
ago," said Graham
Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. "As well as
Trojans being used for financial gain, this latest case has
highlighted a worrying trend of voyeurism. Everyone needs to be
extremely careful about their computer security to ensure they do
not fall victim to an internet blackmailer or peeping tom."
In February, a computer science student was fined by a Spanish court
for a similar offence.
Sophos continues to recommend that internet users ensure their
computers are kept automatically up-to-date with the very latest
anti-virus software, security patches and
firewalls.
More than 100 million users in 150 countries rely on Sophos as the best protection against complex threats and data loss. Sophos is committed to providing security and data protection solutions that are simple to manage, deploy and use and that deliver the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos offers award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, and network access control solutions backed by SophosLabs - a global network of threat intelligence centers. With more than two decades of experience, Sophos is regarded as a leader in security and data protection by top analyst firms and has received many industry awards.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.