A 45-year-old man was arrested April 18 for using a Trojan horse to invade a teen girl’s webcam in what one might call a “peeping hack.”
The unnamed suspect allegedly broke into a webcam to take sexually compromising pictures of a 17-year-old girl in her bedroom, according to the Cyprus Mail, which said he got to her webcam by way of infecting her computer with a Trojan horse.
Described as a computer technician, the suspect is accused of spying on the girl and taking the footage while she was alone and then threatening to send the imagery he took to her email contacts unless she stood naked in front of the cam.
The girl refused and called authorities, the Mail said.
The case prompted Cypriot information technicians and Internet companies to warn computer users to put personal firewalls into their computers, as did Nicosia-based Netymology.
The accused peeping hacker (or hacking peeper) is believed to have sent the Trojan to the girl in an email she accepted unwittingly. Online security company Sophos believes the Trojan in question was the first known instance of malware being deployed to hack a victim's webcam.
"[I]t's since become a standard part of the virus writer's arsenal," said Sophos senior tech consultant Graham Cluley. "Virtually every new instance of the Rbot Internet worm, for example, includes the capability to take photos and movies of unsuspecting computer users. Some virus writers and hackers may simply be using this technique for their own personal voyeurism; others may be tempted to become amateur pornographers as many people have computers in their bedroom.”
