11 ms·

Ask HN: Are there recorded instances of people being framed through hacking?

• micromacrofoot 4y ago
  you could probably frame most people by sending them an unlabeled usb stick in the mail with a simple script that copies a file to their hard drive - curiosity often gets the best of us
  • robswc 4y ago
    I could maybe see this working if you have a year or so to do it. Make it look like a game or something but copy incriminating stuff in the background. Then "tip" the authorities a year later, the person would probably forget all about it. If it's too soon they might still have the USB stick. No idea if that would pose an issue tho. I dunno tho. Not a cyber security guy or lawyer, but interesting "problem" to think about, haha.
    • GekkePrutser 4y ago
      > If it's too soon they might still have the USB stick. No idea if that would pose an issue tho. Not really, if you manage to autorun arbitrary code from it (which is more difficult on the latest OSes), you can also make it wipe itself or something. It's hard to completely wipe USB sticks because of write leveling but a few rewrites should do it. Cheap sticks don't have much spare capacity. In fact if you're really good you can even trick the controller to hide or wipe it somehow. After all you're supplying the hardware so you're in full control of everything.
      • robswc 4y ago
        I guess I'm thinking more on the "how will it be handled by detectives/lawyers/whoever is involved." I mean, say they found corporate secrets on your computer. You say "no idea how they got here but look at this weird USB." Would they be able to see that a small USB sized package was delivered on the day the victim claimed? Would they even look that far, etc, etc. Thanks for providing some answers on the technical side though. That's def a thought too. I mean, seems you could be screwed if you're dealing with someone smart if you're being careless.
  • GekkePrutser 4y ago
    Does that USB stick trick still actually work?? It's pretty old by now and every corporate security training warns about it.
    • micromacrofoot 4y ago
      Yes. An old co-worker in security used to leave them on the floor in the lobby and had to stop when a C-level got mad about falling for it. It rarely didn’t work. The company has mandatory annual security training.
• DeathArrow 4y ago
  >With the hacking capabilities of government and organisations, would planting incriminating material on somebody's computer be trivial? I do believe so. Twenty years ago as an curious teen it was easy for me to penetrate various systems and to dox people. Now the security is better but also the attack vectors and tools evolved. If we aren't talking about oranizations with good security practices or paranoid individuals, it won't take a large organization to break in a target. A good prepared hacker could do it. Maybe not in a few hours or days, but in some time it is doable if that person is sufficiently knowledgeable and determined. But we have to ask what for? Nobody is going to hack your personal system without having nothing to gain. And even if he has something to gain, the prior condition is for him to know this.
  • lookagain 4y ago
    I can foresee one answer to the question 'why would someone do this?'. It's called a potent cocktail of vengeance and self-destruction. People who self-medicate through harming others are always looking for a way to escalate. Look up the story of UGNazi, and don't skip the ending.
    • DeathArrow 4y ago
      Well, I am one of the many people who theoretically can hack someone's system while not leaving evidences of it, at least not evidences pointing to myself. I do have people I dislike, and yet I don't hack in their systems to plant false evidences.
      • lookagain 4y ago
        Some crimes are trivial to commit. Walking away unscathed from committing the crime is far harder than one might think. Consequences are inevitable, one way or another.
      • iwillbenice 4y ago
        While I am sure you are competent like most folks on here, I will say this: I have met a good number of people who claim they can "get in and get out un-noticed". In retrospect, I think rarely did they consider the possibilities of observation beyond the actual target system. My point is this: There is no defense against 0-day/X-day exploits in the wild. But the second best thing against being patched is logging and properly tuned alerting. In my 20-ish years of working in this field I've caught half a dozen attackers/intruders via logs and anomaly alerts. Without those 2nd best things in place the entire network(s) would probably have been compromised. Cheers.
• hgarg 4y ago
  Here is one https://www.wired.com/story/modified-elephant-planted-evidence-hacking-police/ https://www.wired.com/story/modified-elephant-planted-eviden...
• niom 4y ago
  Why would you need hacking for that? Classic https://xkcd.com/538 https://xkcd.com/538 nerd imagination. Simply seize some devices and place the incriminating evidence on them. Or just place a device with incriminating evidence among other seized evidence. Crime shows make you think every item is individually serialized and bagged or whatever but in reality they're just going to make a bag labelled "15 SD cards and 6 USB sticks". Stuff like hard drives is just going to be "hard drive #6" in the log. Just swap the stickers, easy as pie. You think evidence is stored securely? Secure is expensive, and it's all stuff of guilty people anyway (otherwise it wouldn't be seized).
  • bitwize 4y ago
    I've watched cop shows and noticed that there are scenes when the DA comes in and chews out the chief of police for doing slipshod work because he doesn't have enough evidence to convict. When the reality is more like a Chappellian "sprinkle some crack on the evidence". Or the cops will just lie on the stand and the jury will take them at their word.
    • mandmandam 4y ago
      In Ireland we had a huge bruhaha over our Tánaiste (a high up in government) being "terrorized" at a protest in Jobstown. For weeks, headlines across the country talked about how she was "trapped" in her car "for hours". She was "terrified"! Protesters were brought up on serious criminal charges over this incident of "kidnapping" and "forceful detention". High ranking police-people testified on the stand that her car was unable to leave the area due to the protesters, for hours. Then, it came out - leaked on social media - that video footage from multiple angles proved beyond doubt that the incident had been completely overblown. In fact, she could have left at any time, with plenty of space behind her car. All those police sergeants and the Tánaiste herself were lying out of their teeth. The response from Irish media was to try and put restrictions on social media. They ignored the story for a while, then a few years later printed stories about her "recalling her trauma" at the protest. So yeah. This was a high profile incident with an entire country watching - imagine what they do when the accused is 'just some professor or journalist or whatever'.
• jimlongton 4y ago
  Yes, look up the Bhima Koregaon case in India. Indian police used Israeli spyware to hack the phones of lawyers, human rights activists and critics of Modi. They also used phishing and other malware to plant terrorist material and then imprisoned them. > In Wilson’s case, a piece of malware known as NetWire had added 32 files to a folder of the computer’s hard drive, including a letter in which Wilson appeared to be conspiring with a banned Maoist group to assassinate Indian prime minister Narendra Modi. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/07/20/indian-activists-surveillance/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/07/20/indian-activ... [2] https://www.wired.com/story/modified-elephant-planted-evidence-hacking-police/ https://www.wired.com/story/modified-elephant-planted-eviden...
  • pencilguin 4y ago
    Just last year an NSA ... contractor? ... was convicted for mishandling classified materials, and, curiously, not for possessing the child pornography they also accused him of having on his computer. There was a wholly credulous New Yorker article about it, linked on HN. Supposedly he had foolishly exposed all the passwords of his phone and online accounts so they could freely find anything they liked, or that had been planted. And the unit he worked in was, IIRC, coincidentally exactly involved in cracking security on accounts, and somebody else he had worked with, there, had developed an antipathy toward him, to the point that he had filed an HR case expressing fear for his own safety. That a top-level security expert would have left all his own passwords exposed was transparently ludicrous, and the author and jury should both have been deeply suspicious of any evidence claimed to come from it, but seemed entirely oblivious. It is just possible the jury saw evidence not derived from online records. But I doubt it.
    • GekkePrutser 4y ago
      > That a top-level security expert would have left all his own passwords exposed was transparently ludicrous Not quite. Some experts apply all their own expertise to themselves, others are more lackluster about their own opsec because they 'know what they are doing' or 'this isn't anything important'. Never underestimate human laziness. I work in IT security and I see the full range of total disinterest to full tinfoil hat mode in this environment when it comes to people's own resources. Also, it depends on people's area of expertise. Most of our networking security specialists are running segmented VLANs and IDS at home, and WPA3 with all the trimmings. The Windows AD security guys would just have whatever router the provider provides and sometimes don't even change the provided wifi password (which in many cases is algorithm-generated based on the MAC address or something!), but their windows workstations would be top-notch secured.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• magpi3 4y ago
  Here was an attempted framing that backfired. Talk about making a poor life decision. https://techland.time.com/2011/07/14/man-hacks-into-neighbors-wi-fi-network-to-frame-them-for-child-porn-and-more/ https://techland.time.com/2011/07/14/man-hacks-into-neighbor...
  • pkrotich 4y ago
    Sourced Wired article here https://www.wired.com/2011/07/hacking-neighbor-from-hell/ https://www.wired.com/2011/07/hacking-neighbor-from-hell/
• charleslmunger 4y ago
  https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/09/world/europe/vladimir-putin-russia-fake-news-hacking-cybersecurity.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/09/world/europe/vladimir-put...
  • gdy 4y ago
    Seriously? Putin must have also bought off British detectives and a prosecutor. "Bukovsky, who was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1976, told detectives he had indecent material, the court heard. “He [Bukovsky] responded immediately by saying he did download images and that they would be on the computer in his study,” Carter said. The police subsequently discovered “a very great deal of material” on two hard drives. It showed some “very young” children up to the ages of 12 and 13. They were “largely but by no means exclusively boys”, the court was told. There were some adults involved. In an interview, Bukovsky told detectives he had become interested in child abuse images in the 1990s in the context of a debate on the control and censorship of the internet. “He became curious,” Carter said. Bukovsky then looked for and discovered this material online, the prosecutor said. “Bukovsky said his initial curiosity turned into a hobby, rather like stamp collecting,” Carter said. The dissident continued to download images between 1999 and 2014, and estimated that he had accumulated a collection of “1,500 movies”. His interest varied year by year. The last downloads took place days before his arrest. “His computer was looking for material constantly,” Carter told the jury. “Mr Bukovsky said in essence he didn’t see what harm he was doing. He said the children in most of the material looked as if they were enjoying themselves.” The prosecution acknowledged that Bukovsky was a notable Kremlin critic seen as a hero by those who supported “the extension of human rights and democratic reform in Russia”. “There was unfortunately another side to this man, which was far from laudable: an extensive interest in real children being really abused,” Carter said." https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/dec/12/soviet-dissident-vladimir-bukovsky-downloaded-thousands-of-child-abuse-images-uk-court-told https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/dec/12/soviet-dissi...
• rosnd 4y ago
  Yes. Australian federal police arrested Matthew Flannery aka Aush0k in 2013 claiming that he was the "leader of lulzsec". They even held a big press conference about this, but in reality Flannery had been framed and never held any ties to lulzsec. This happened because a bunch of people had been defacing Australian government websites with messages from "Aush0k, the leader of lulzsec" in order to mess with him. Those mean hackers even defaced MIT.edu with his name (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5098218 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5098218) Flannery was later found guilty of some computer crimes, but not the ones for which he was initially jailed.
• SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago
  If the attempt to frame someone succeeded, by definition you won't hear abut it as "someone being framed".
  • crtasm 4y ago
    If the reality of the events were later proven, yes you would.
    • SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago
      If that happens, then it didn't ultimately succeed. By definition.
      • macintux 4y ago
        Money, imprisonment, trauma, stress, career destroyed...how much "success" do you want?
        • SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago
          I fully take your point about damage done, sure, but framing someone is an act of deception. If it is _ultimately_ uncovered, then the deception did not hold.
          • robswc 4y ago
            You make a really good point. However, nobody would "frame" someone for deception's sake. There's gotta be an underlying motive. If the deception works to achieve that goal (or even 90% of it) I'd say its pretty successful. I agree it's a weird gray area though and you're correct that a "perfect framing" would never be found out.
            • SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago
              > If the deception works to achieve that goal (or even 90% of it) I'd say its pretty successful. That is true, but also anyone (With the usual exception of "untouchable" state agencies) who is found out to be framing someone, can expect to be prosecuted, regardless of if their frame was found before the intended damage was done, or after. "Perverting the Course of Justice" is a serious crime, and a frame qualifies as such: https://www.stoneking.co.uk/literature/e-bulletins/perverting-the-course-justice https://www.stoneking.co.uk/literature/e-bulletins/pervertin...
• scantis 4y ago
  The usage of locally forbidden material in online gaming, to insta ban opponents or as a form of protest is a well known trivial hack. Some games allow to spray an image file to a wall, the picture is downloaded by all players. Locally enforced censorship then causes disconnects and even legal repurcussians to some gamers. In some countries you are strongly obligated to make contact with illegal images know to the authorities. Failing to do so is punishable. Such an attack is as trivial, as annomously sending illegal material to the target, depending on the country. There are thousand of cases of minors sending nudes and causing legal investigations. You find articles of parents sending pictures to doctors and being banned from online services, which are known. Other social attacks, such as giving out free USB sticks with incriminating material are thinkable. Allthoug I am not aware of this being proven to have happened, one can find cases where people used this as a defense. People providing free uncensored internet by running a Tor node are known to have lots of legal troubles because of it, with different severity depending on the country. Even making it to no flight lists. Illegal pictures might not be viewed by the public. A government could just claim they found them on your device and may have a way to exclude them to be viewn by anyone. So an individual may have to start a defense from the fact that illegal material has been found on a device, without a chance to ever see the image. Again depending on the country and legal system, there might not even be a need for those illegal pictures to actually exist. Here a document from a governmental entity suffices.
  • bombcar 4y ago
    I mean I guess you could say Stuxnet was a "free usb hack". A similar variation popular on Reddit is sock-puppeting illegal/forbidden material faster than the moderators can deal with it, and then get the admins to shut it down.
  • prvit 4y ago
    > The usage of locally forbidden material in online gaming, to insta ban opponents or as a form of protest is a well known trivial hack. Some games allow to spray an image file to a wall, the picture is downloaded by all players. Locally enforced censorship then causes disconnects and even legal repurcussians to some gamers. Any examples?
• RunSet 4y ago
  https://www.forbes.com/sites/augustinefou/2021/06/07/the-curious-case-of-rebekah-jones-suspension-from-twitter/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/augustinefou/2021/06/07/the-cur...
• mikewarot 4y ago
  A similar tactic is SWATting, the act of fraudulently calling emergency services to another person's address. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatting
• eivarv 4y ago
  Yes – and not only for government and organizations: > In 1999, NetBus was used to plant child pornography on the work computer of a law scholar at Lund University. The 3,500 images were discovered by system administrators, and the law scholar was assumed to have downloaded them knowingly. He lost his research position at the faculty, and following the publication of his name fled the country and had to seek professional medical care to cope with the stress. He was acquitted from criminal charges in late 2004, as a court found that NetBus had been used to control his computer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetBus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetBus
  • jliptzin 4y ago
    Even a law professor couldn't escape being framed, what does that mean for the rest of us?
    • pardon_me 4y ago
      Cheaper and quicker to just disappear us
      • jliptzin 4y ago
        Is it? If someone turns up dead or goes missing, everyone wonder’s what happened and who did it. Frame someone for CP, no one’s thinking of hackers.
    • cylon13 4y ago
      Why would you expect a law professor to be an expert in avoiding being framed?
      • jliptzin 4y ago
        They might have the resources (experience, connections, money) to mount a successful defense that the average person wouldn't have access to?
        • 4y ago
• scarface74 4y ago
  I’ve read articles with various degrees of credibility. From this one that was seemed very credible https://www.deccanchronicle.com/technology/in-other-news/120117/beware-hackers-are-planting-child-porn-on-peoples-computers.html https://www.deccanchronicle.com/technology/in-other-news/120... To this one that seemed to have been a scam https://thehill.com/homenews/media/477482-paul-krugman-my-computer-was-hacked-to-download-child-pornography/ https://thehill.com/homenews/media/477482-paul-krugman-my-co... Just to be clear. I don’t mean that Krugman was lying and he was actually downloading child porn and he was trying to cover his tracks. I mean that someone fooled him into thinking that he had been hacked. To make it more clear. There was no indication that Krugman ever had child porn on his computer that either he downloaded or that he was hacked.
• mlry 4y ago
  A German bank was investigated in 2010 [0] for allegedly planting discriminating evidence on the PC of a manager who they wanted to get rid of. I don't know exactly the outcome of this, but that bank was involved in a lot of scandals at that time. [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/details-on-the-wild-allegations-of-spying-and-porn-evidence-planting-at-a-german-bank-2010-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/details-on-the-wild-allegati...
  • pencilguin 4y ago
    Officers of Wells Fargo, Credit Suisse, and HSBC all seem to get away with a very great deal. I had gathered that HSBC, in particular, was (in the past, and maybe still?) the favored financial conduit of CIA projects, making investigating anything there what is called a "career-limiting activity" for any incautious FBI agent.
• tablespoon 4y ago
  Yes, an instance was documented in the documentary The Net from 1995.
  • bigmattystyles 4y ago
    With that girl from the bus
    • egberts1 4y ago
      Wearing blindfold...
• jliptzin 4y ago
  You don't need the hacking capabilities of a government, simply transferring files (like child porn) onto someone's computer without them knowing would be trivial to do once an exploit is found on the target's computer - certainly a lot simpler than ransomware which seems pervasive. Surprised it does not happen more often considering how easy it is, or maybe it does, after all who is giving an accused pedophile the benefit of the doubt?
• VLM 4y ago
  Hillary's email server?
• agilob 4y ago
  I remember reading here on HN a story of a US journalist, who was documenting some darkweb stories, one day he found out he was the target on some forum, people were crowdfunding to buy drugs online and deliver to his address, notify police about drug possession. He notified the police first.
  • mtlynch 4y ago
    It sounds like you're thinking of Brian Krebs: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/09/interview-with-the-guy-who-tried-to-frame-me-for-heroin-possession/ https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/09/interview-with-the-guy-w...
    • agilob 4y ago
      Yes
• TEP_Kim_Il_Sung 4y ago
  Arguably, Ross Ulbricht was framed. The agents arresting him had full admin access and opportunity to plant all the evidence.
  • pencilguin 4y ago
    Yes. All the evidence in his case was badly tainted. Doesn't mean he is innocent, but that is what we are supposed to presume in absence of anything reliable.
• Stamp01 4y ago
  People get hacked because of iframes all the time. This is called clickjacking. It's an example of the so-called confused deputy problem. Developers can and should mitigate the issue by setting the X-Frame-Options and Content-Security-Policy headers appropriately.
• tonywebster 4y ago
  After a Minnesota lawyer reported his neighbor for allegedly sexually assaulting his son, that neighbor cracked the lawyer's wi-fi WEP encryption and proceeded to attempt to frame him for CSAM crimes, sexual harassment, and threatening of politicians. The lawyer's employer hired an outside firm to investigate, the Secret Service showed up, and ultimately a search warrant at the neighbor's home found evidence that he was the true culprit. He was given 18 years in prison. [1] https://www.wired.com/2011/07/hacking-neighbor-from-hell/ https://www.wired.com/2011/07/hacking-neighbor-from-hell/
  • ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
    Jeez, imagine if the guy didn't have the support of his employer.
  • lamontcg 4y ago
    From earlier this year "Wife Framed Husband By Planting Child Sexual Abuse Images On Phone: Police" (https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/wife-framed-husband-by-planting-child-sexual-abuse-images-on-phone-police/ar-AAXh6G8 https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/wife-framed-husband-by-...)
• hedora 4y ago
  I can't find the article, but some people don't realize gmail's sent folder can contain incoming messages. (Google insists this is a feature.) Anyway, people have been fired because a coworker received a forged harassing email, and IT found the message in the true victim's sent box. Not really hacking, but, unlike every other mail client, GMail BCC (blind carbon copy) displays the BCC list to every recipient. This has caused significant trouble for people too. Examples: Send carefully worded response to harassing coworker, and BCC HR. Coworker sees the BCC, gets further bent out of shape. Alternatively, sales person BCCs some corporate VP or legal or other person the customer is not supposed to know about. As they say, if you are not paying, you are the product.
  • davchana 4y ago
    > Not really hacking, but, unlike every other mail client, GMail BCC (blind carbon copy) displays the BCC list to every recipient. This has caused significant trouble for people too. Do you mean if Smith was in TO field, Tom in CC, John in BCC, all these will be true? Smith & Tom should be able to see Smith as TO & Tom as CC. Both of them should not see John as BCC. John should be able to see all,TO, CC & BCC.
  • kelnos 4y ago
    > GMail BCC (blind carbon copy) displays the BCC list to every recipient Uhhhh... no it doesn't.
• jrm4 4y ago
  I suspect this happens A LOT. This wasn't "recorded" because the victim is a very private person; but I was part of a team that caught the prosecution in a little podunk town attempting to either interfere or plant evidence on a server DURING trial. We absolutely caught them red-handed. Perhaps it could have been made into a bigger issue, but it's kind of like, it's a small town no one cares about -- the judge is obviously one of "them"," and the victim REALLY doesn't want to be caught up in big news stuff, so we're all opting to be quiet about it.
• yieldcrv 4y ago
  I think its a ripe vulnerability that is being exploited and the people being framed have no clue what is happening or how to prove they are a victim. So that also means we don't have proof they are being framed because they haven't been vindicated yet. Aside from criminal issues, most of this is happening in arbitration and civil courts. I can give one or two suspect examples that mostly involve ignorance, resulting in the wrong defendant being there, the TV arbitrator finding the defendant absurd, and rewarding the plaintiff. Despite the defendant echoing well known issues in IT and cybersecurity circles.
• ipython 4y ago
  Fabricated evidence in a trial against a supposed coup attempt in Turkey: https://balyozdavasivegercekler.com/2012/10/04/dani-rodrik-did-microsoft-steal-its-fonts-from-the-turkish-army/ https://balyozdavasivegercekler.com/2012/10/04/dani-rodrik-d...
• mikercampbell 4y ago
  I think most policemen are "good" (it's complicated) but I still perk up when I see one in my rearview mirror. I used to feel bad about it, thinking that I was paranoid, until I read a tweet that a policeman can kill you without much consequence, and so you have every right to be unsettled. I say this as someone who's sister was killed by a policeman who ran a red light, but was revived by the paramedics. She had severe brain hemorrhages, lacerated organs, broke her spine in a dozen places, and her pelvis in another dozen, and lost the use of 1/3rd of her brain tissue from blunt trauma. And while she was in a coma, the policeman tried to illegally access her phone, obtain blood and urine samples without a warrant, and more, all in an attempt to frame her. And to top it all off, on the one year anniversary of her surviving, she was served papers in the driveway on our way to dinner for "emotional trauma" and his sprained wrist from the incident. The judge sided with the policeman, despite the tire marks, forensics, and eye witnesses that demonstrated he ran that red light. She was fined her net worth, which included her entire college savings. She is alive and well, but will never be the same. This isn't a statement on police or police reform as much as it is an example of systems put in place to protect us (courts, FBI, the internet and its attempt at security) but can with one false swipe destroy everything we've ever worked for or loved. It sounds dramatic, but there are a dozen stories on this thread that demonstrate that. I'm not sure exactly what I'm trying to say, but it's insane how our social immune system isn't free from autoimmune diseases, where the mechanisms put in place to protect can instantly be flipped by a single bad actor. The template is like this: 1) Someone plants evidence on your device 2) Investigators are tipped off or find it 3) You get fired, registered as a sex offender, thrown in prison, flee the country, and your reputation is in shambles. 4) the media, rumormill, or even public statements from government, your former employer, university, etc. are distributed like wildfire. 5) it's proven that it wasn't actually you, you were just framed 6) society bears no responsibility in repairing anything it damaged in the process. You're not guaranteed anything, and not only that, scary news travels faster and further than "redaction-based news". 7) you might as well have committed the crime because you faced all the consequences of doing it in the first place. Did I get that right?
  • jliptzin 4y ago
    Yes, you got that all right but left out the cherry on top. Prosecutors will try to make a deal with you for admitting your guilt. As an innocent person your instinct would obviously be to reject any admission of guilt and go to trial, surely the jury will find you innocent? But in that scenario, prosecutors make clear they will seek the maximum penalty, which for possession of CSAM could very possibly be 50+ years in prison. Do you take the risk? After all, technically you are in possession of the material even though you know it wasn’t you who put you there. Who knows what the jury will think. Or do you take the deal and go on with the rest of your life falsely being labeled an admitted, convicted pedophile? My heart aches for your sister by the way, I hope she can somehow heal.
• resoluteteeth 4y ago
  There was a case in Japan in 2012 where someone sent death threats through other people's computers, initially leading to people whose computers were compromised being arrested: https://www.pcworld.com/article/439407/cathacking-japanese-man-admits-cybercrime-guilt.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/439407/cathacking-japanese-m...
• egberts1 4y ago
  Not quite the false charge but in defense against being falsely charged. That's why you always boot into a forensic-type OS on CD before examining that USB stick that you found in a parking lot at work. Also, I caught someone having had forbiddingly inserting a USB stick into a "white lab" PC. Which was a seldom used cybersecurity defensive practice to detect for (USB insertion) back in 2004. It was a simple matter of a rsyslog plug-in using encrypted tunneling for its syslog messages to a remote log server. (He wryly did say, "I did not see that" and was eventually released on unrelated charges). It's hard work to do all that because it's multiple layers ... of integrity, reporting integrity, that protects the innocent parties (as well as nabbing the guilt ones).