A reversal of fortunes

In my "Where is the science?" entry I questioned the decisions on two cases of child pornography possession and that our ability as examiners to find images is just not enough. In an interesting reversal on the Diodoro case, the Pennsylvania superior court decided that viewing images is in essence exerting control or possession of CP.

To quote the article:
"[Diodoro's] actions of operating the computer mouse, locating the Web sites, opening the sites, displaying the images on his computer screen, and then closing the sites were affirmative steps and corroborated his interest and intent to exercise influence over, and, thereby, control over the child pornography,

He added that while Diodoro was viewing the pornography, he had the ability to download, print, copy or e-mail the images."

Wow, now that is actually an interesting way of looking at things. That you have the image displayed on screen means you have the ability to do something to or with it, and therefore you have control over the image.

Here's how I'm viewing this...

If I am viewing an image, it's true that I can do what I wish with it, except modify the original as displayed on the website. I am in possession of a digital copy of the original, which is as good as the original file as displayed on the website.

The copy that has been automatically downloaded to my computer's temporary internet cache and is being displayed is under my possession and control at that point in time when I am viewing the image. My actions (visiting the website willingly, and possibly expanding a thumbnail image) affirm the fact that I wanted to view the image and therefore I have the ability to exert control over it; I have the ability to manipulate the image as I see fit - which is to say I can save, copy, email, print, crop, etc...

Let's hope that other Courts can use this during prosecution of these types of cases where the law states that anyone who "possesses or controls" these images is guilty. Chalk one up for the good guys.

Thoughts?

Review - Virtual Honeypots

I got this book approximately 3 days ago and absolutely tore through it. This book was fantastic in every sense of the word.

Niels Provos (of honeyd fame) and Thorsten Holz (from the German honeynet project) teamed up to provide a true wealth of knowledge and information in Virtual Honeypots *note I bought it from Amazon*

As the title suggests, this book is all about creating and utilizing a virtualized environment to host honeypots. From the first chapter on, there is no mincing of words and the technical aspects are covered from set up to configuration to usage. Virtual Honeypots is a logical progression from the initial honeypots and KYE books and focuses more on the honeypot than the honeynet. There's such a wide variety of topics discussed that this book is probably best served as a reference after reading it once or twice. I was in awe when I read chapter 7 and specifically the section on the potemkin honeyfarm which apparently has been used to emulate over 64,000 honeypots!

This book presents itself really well and the authors did a fantastic job covering all of the critical and really interesting projects that are out there in the honey(net|pot) world. If you operate a honeynet or honeypots this book is not an option, it simply provides too much information to ignore. Even if you don't operate a honey(net|pot) this book is well worth the money and It's going right on the shelf next to other quick grab reference books.