Cyber Crimes Case Study

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Abstract

This paper critically analyses the state of Connecticut vs. Julie Amero case by describing when and how the event took place. An examination probing the weakness in the ruling made is also looked at as well the the evidence produced, both by the prosecution and the defense teams. The development of the attack tree to the cyber crime is given as well as recommendations on appropriate measures to prevent spyware attacks.

Julie Amero was a seventh grade teacher at Kelly Middle school in Norwich Connecticut when she was convicted. On January 5, 2007, she was charged in the Norwich superior court on four counts of endangering the students' morals by exposing them to pornographic images from a porn site.

It was stated by the prosecution that on October 9, 2004, Amero's classroom computer was accessed by students as she was momentarily outside the class. From the evidence produced, the students were looking at a hair styling website; new-hair-styles.com. Then shortly afterwards, a series of web browser windows started popping up, each displaying pornographic images. Amero tried to close them but they kept popping up relentlessly. She then ran to the teachers' lounge to ask for help but got none, some of them telling her that it was not a big issue (Krebs, 2007)

Some of the children went on and reported the matter to their parents, who then demanded an explanation from the school's administration. Amero was consequently sacked and a few days later, she was arrested by police and charged with misdemeanor.

On June 6, 2007, the New London superior court judge overturned the conviction that she had endangered the lives of the children by allowing them to view pornographic content in the classroom computer. Judge Hillary B. Strackbein termed the information provided by the prosecution as being false and erroneous (Mills, 2008). Amero was then allowed a new trial in which she entered a plea of not guilty.

On November 21, 2008, before superior court judge Robert E. Young, Amero pled guilty to a charge of disorderly conduct and was ordered to pay a fine of $100 as well as surrendering her teaching license (Mills, 2008).

Consultant and defense witness Herbert W. Horner testified that the images were due to pop-up advertisements caused by spyware on the computer (Krebs, 2007). The defense argued that the computer, running on Microsoft Windows 98, had an outdated version of Internet Explorer web browser. They also noted that the computer and the school's network did not have did not have updated firewall and antivirus protection. This made the computer prone to the inappropriate pop-ups. In fact, the school's firewall license had expired and that it did not have any anti-spyware tools.

Computer forensic experts deduced that malware programs made the computer's browser to visit the pornographic websites automatically. It was also discovered that the pop-ups were created a spyware program called NewDotNet which had been installed on October 14, 2005. Computer forensic expert and Norwich police detective Mark Lounsbury testified that log files in the computer showed that porn images and web pages were accessed by the computer's browser while Julie Amero was in class. This, he said, proved that the pornographic websites were willingly visited by clicking on a link or entering the URL into the address bar of the web browser. This evidence was later disputed on the grounds that detective Lounsbury only used Computer Cop Professional in his forensic analysis (Eckelberry et al, 2007). This program could not be able to determine whether a site was visited willingly or accidentally.

The evidence provided by the prosecution is pretty inconclusive to determine whether Julie Amero visited the pornographic websites intentionally or the pop-ups were due to spyware. Amero tried to get help from other teachers to resolve the problem but was shrugged away. Amero did not even deserve to be fined the $100 because the defense team was not allowed to present evidence from the scanned computer hard drive that would have proved it had spyware prior to the incident.

The classroom computer was running on Windows 98 while Windows XP had already been introduced five years earlier. It was also using Explorer 5 yet Internet Explorer 6, which was a lot more safer because it had pop-up blockers, had been introduced three years earlier. From expert