A computer technician has been handed down a four-year jail sentence for using a webcam to take illicit pictures of a young girl in her bedroom.
The 47-year old IT worker from Cyprus took control of the girl’s internet camera after he infected her PC with a Trojan horse he anonymously sent her in an e-mail.
The man, who has not been named, then took compromising photos of the teenager and threatened to send them to her e-mail contacts unless she posed for him naked.
Despite being captured alone and exposed for a long time, the girl, who was then aged 17, refused to be blackmailed and contacted the police who arrested the man in 2005.
“Most spyware is designed to steal your identity, your passwords or your banking information - but it is just as easy for hackers to program a Trojan horse to take over your webcam,” warned Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos.
“This case highlights that as well as malware being used for financial gain, it can also be used by voyeurs. Everyone needs to give computer security the upmost importance to ensure they do not fall victim to an internet blackmailer or a Peeping Tom.”
It is not the first time poorly-defended PCs have been taken advantage of by tech-savvy perverts: in 2005, a Spanish computer sciences student was slapped with a fine for ogling a young woman via her webcam without her consent.
