State worker cleared on child porn charges that were due to malware
A fired Massachusetts state worker has been exonerated of a charge of possessing child pornography after computer forensics showed that his work laptop was infected with malicious software that was surreptitiously visiting illegal Web sites.
Michael Fiola, 53, was fired as a worker's comp fraud investigator with the Massachusetts Department of Industrial Accidents in March 2007 after IT administrators found cached images of child porn in the temporary Internet files in his browser, according to the Dark Reading security news site.
Fiola, described as being "computer illiterate," hired a forensics expert who found the evidence that was used to convince the court to drop the case last week. He remains unemployed and plans to sue the agency over his firing.
"Our lives have been hell," Fiola, a former state park ranger now living in Rhode Island told the Boston Herald. "I hope to recover my reputation, but our friends all ran."
His laptop initially attracted attention because its wireless usage was four times higher than that of his co-workers. But because the IT department hadn't properly configured the agency laptop and antivirus software wasn't working on the machine, it was riddled with Trojans and viruses, in addition to the malicious software that was bringing up the porn sites.
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The issue is responsibility of the employer who failed in their required dilligence and as a result, create a victim out of someone they should have protected, educated, and respected.
A lesson to users not to be so trusting, especially of the "experts" who set them up...litterally! But as for the rest of his life, he may never regain the trust and respect of those who gave value to his life...his friends. That's a little more important than a petty, childish attitude about an operating system. It's not about a platform, and it's not about data...it's about something more important.
Anyway, no OS presently out there will keep a determined idiot at the keyboard from malware. Some OSs do better than others at this but they all have security holes. That being said, it is a whole lot easier to secure OS X, BSD and Linux than it is to secure Windows. Your odds of getting infected with malware with a default setup are much higher with Windows.
I do monitor my systems for any unusual activity because the only secure system is one that is locked in a vault and has no power applied. Even with those precautions someone will eventually figure out a way to access it.
'OSX is 100% secure so it is as vulnerable as windows and therefore needs AV'
"No one has ever put a default Windows install on the INTERNET that got exploited"
"The only time Windows gets exploited is when the user does something stupid,."
It would be funny if it wasn't for the fact that this fan boys truly believe it.
This is about someone being terminated by an employer before there was a competent investigation into wrongdoing according to a court. Then there is the issue of the long term consequences of the unjustified termination which has yet to be decided.
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by Pause2Reflect
June 17, 2008 10:07 PM PDT
- Here's what will change as a result of this sad story: zip. Also, zilch, squat, and nada.
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See all 53 Comments >>Prosecutors adore child porn cases. They enrage the public (justifiably) and appeal to the prurient subconscious, bringing more attention than any other type of case to the prosecutor -- along with a nice "child protecting hero" veneer. Add to this, over the past twenty years (and especially since 9/11) Americans have been tripping over each other in a non-race to see who can be more complacent about the disintegration of civil rights. The drivers for prosecution continue to firmly favor "shoot first, act questions later (or never)."
Maybe you're next. But of course, odds are you won't be, so don't worry about it.