Investigating Child Pornography

The book I read to research this post was Digital Child Pornography: An Investigative Guide by Chad Steel which is an excellent book that I read at kindle unlimited. This book it appears is the only one on kindle unlimited on this topic and does a really good job of explaining how it is investigated. I’m quite interested in digital forensics but in this day and age of paedo’s using sites like XboxLive.com to groom children and setting up groups on Facebook if you are for example a parent you perhaps should read this book. Traditionally these people used invitation only backrooms in adult bookshops. For a long time it was on the decline perhaps the worst thing about the internet has been the proliferation of this. Some misguided people think they are just browsing when they view this kind of thing but there is a very real problem that on these sites they often request all sorts of sick perversions that the owners then provide. In Britain there is talk of them passing a law making requesting child porn a crime. Often they use P2P sites some of the older ones being bit torrent and limewire. These sites often don’t check what is being uploaded apart from being illegal in themselves. There is all sorts of weird so called genres with in this and even having something like manga if it is based around this kind of thing is illegal to possess. Bear in mind even if you format your hard drive after having this kind of stuff on it can still be recovered. They can use special wiping software though. At one time to prosecute someone for having indecent images they had to prove a financial transaction of some kind had taken place. This often led to law enforcement dropping many cases because of the difficulties investigating it. When law enforcement interview a suspect they will usually start small and try and get him to admit to a lesser offence say downloading child porn and build on that gradually by trying to get him to admit to more serious things. They will also often use technical terms and if the suspect doesn’t ask what they mean and appears to understand them that also is a sign he is guilty. They have to be careful about pressuring a suspect and must give him regular breaks etc we have all heard of cases like where someone is pressured so much they say something like look what do I have to say to get out of here. Obviously that kind of thing can result in an unsafe conviction. I did quite enjoy this book and do recommend it.

The Dark Net

The book I read to research this post was The Dark Net by Jamie Bartlett which is an excellent book that I bought on Kindle. The book is currently the top selling computer book on kindle at the moment. The dark net is quite a hot topic at the moment and there have been quite a few short books on the some free but this is the first full length book I’ve come across. The book tends to look at the alternate side of the internet not just the dark net which is websites not indexed by the search engines. Of course some people have a genuine reason for going on the dark net like people in oppressive regimes seeking an unbiased version of the news. The top drug dealing sites on the dark net make millions of dollars per annum. People use mostly bitcoins to pay for their purchases and hopefully they send it by courier if it is sent. There is something called britcoins where you can do a transaction in pounds sterling rather than converting to dollars. You have to use the tor browser with the dark net and this is a browser that hides your identity and uses the IP address of volunteers to hide your activity. There are pornographic sites like chaturbate that don’t use the dark net and are in the book nonetheless. These kind of sites have often become a brand in their own right. They hire people like college girls to have a web cam in their room and take video calls for money. On a site like this their will typically be a 20 minute wait if you have the free option or you get through sooner if you pay. Many of the girls are quite ordinary looking and not necessarily what you might associate with a model. Jamie the author went around interviewing people for the book and much of it is what people said in interviews. Cam-models often have to spend hours on social media sites getting punters and it isn’t just them taking their clothes off. It is very much a full time job. There was a site called voyeurdorm where some college students lived in a house with assorted webcams around it and people could watch their day to day activity. There is of course a dark side to all this. There was a 13 year old called Justin Berry in 2000 who set up a webcam and initially he got offered $50 to take off his shirt and the amounts of money involved got more and more and the acts got more and more extreme. The site did get closed down but it became the earliest example of a minor getting sexually abused on a webcam site. I did thoroughly enjoy this book and would wholeheartedly recommend it. I think the information tends to pertain to the British market but there is plenty of interest.

Cyber Crime & Cyber Terrorism

The book I read to research this post was Cyber Crime & Cyber Terrorism Investigator’s Handbook by Babak Akhbari et al which is a very good book that I read at http://safaribooksonline.com. This book is a detailed examination of what constitutes as cyber crime and cyber terrorism and the measures that can be taken to investigate and prevent it. Cyber terrorism in itself is something that rarely happens in it’s true form. There have only been 2 incidents of true cyber terrorism and both were thwarted. One was a terrorist cell in Pakistan tried to change people’s blood types in a hospital database thus if they got a blood transfusion they would get the wrong type of blood and die. The other was by a terrorist faction in London that tried to blow up the Plus Net headquarters rendering people who relied on their ISP service helpless. Many websites would have been incapacitated which could potentially have resulted in loss of life. There were many medical websites dependent on this service. More common is terrorism and crime that isn’t of a wholly cyber nature but has a cyber aspect. Things like using phishing websites to raise funds for a terrorist cause. It’s well known things like pirated media like software funds terrorism. There was a case in Sri Lanka where the Tamil Tigers launched a huge number of e-mails at their embassies with a message to try and frighten them. Just because there haven’t been many cyber terrorist attacks doesn’t mean precautions don’t need to taken to potentially thwart it. This kind of thing isn’t just against governments either. The church of scientology tried to have a parody interview with a Tom Cruise double removed from YouTube and faced several Denial of Service attacks to their website and had to beef up security to stop it happening. I did really enjoy this book and it is on an interesting subject. I can tell the authors know their stuff inside out.

Hackers On Steroids

The book I read to research this post was Hackers On Steroids which is a very good book which I downloaded from kindle. This book is around 300 pages but is free on kindle at least at the moment and is really good value. This book is mainly about trolls and to a lesser extent RIP trolls, hackers and paedophiles. According to this book these people are often very well organised co ordinating mass attacks particularly on sites dedicated to dead people on Facebook but almost any site can be a target. In 2010 there was a kind of troll wars and these people split into smaller groups. They often use Facebook groups and one issue in the book was Facebook don’t take enough action. They do stay with in the law though. The title of the book was taken from a vigilante group for trolls on Facebook that is now defunct. This book does name a lot of these trolls and similar folk. I haven’t in case it glorifies what they do. The author of the book is British and does help the police track down these trolls, some of whom have ended up in prison. In America they are streets ahead of Britain in dealing with this kind of behaviour and where as in Britain they might get locked up for a few months, in the States they are looking at many years. One problem with policing sites like Twitter & Facebook is first they are often policed by people in foreign countries often at around $1 per hour, but also if they bar someones account which Facebook does to 20,000 accounts per day these people can circumnavigate it. Let’s face it, it’s 7 million accounts per year which I think in a lot of cases is the same people over and over again. Many of these criminals meet up on social media sites like Facebook & Twitter and also use instant messaging to stay in contact. This is quite an interesting book which I thought makes an interesting book review and blog post. It’s a bit of an unpleasant subject though.

 

Darknet

The book I read to research this post was Darknet by Lance Henderson which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. I will give you a word of advice this information is intended for information purposes only and unless you have a good reason I wouldn’t dabble in all this privacy and anonymity on the web stuff especially things like darknet websites which maybe can be something like Iranian newsites but can also be something much more disturbing. The author of this book has dabbled in computers since the 80’s and has many years of experience using things like Tor & other security products. Tor comes in the form of a browser that hides personal information like credit card details, ip addresses & location. You mustn’t go on a site like facebook with this product where they can take advantage of inherent weaknesses in Tor. Sites like Facebook pool together as much information about you which is then used as marketing information for businesses. There is a website at http://freenet.org where you take a massive download which only downloads slowly but is many links to darknet websites which are not listed in search engines like google. Another idea for helping your privacy is vpn or virtual privacy networks for which a fee will be paid and in return they hide your internet information. Bear in mind the vpn has access to this information so you probably don’t want one that is based in the same country as you as it will have to give information if requested to by the authorities. Some people dabble in P2P sites where you can often download the latest album, film or software for free falsely thinking their personal information is secure. These sites access part of your hard drive for shared files potentially allowing access to anything on your computer. Even where encryption is used you can bet law enforcement people have tools that will decrypt it. Also organisations like the MPAA are determined to crack down on people who use these sites not just people who sell pirated goods. This is a great ebook although only short and I think it’s a great subject to do a blog on.