Pedophiles finding new ways to hide online, warns cybersecurity firm

Pedophiles may have found a new way to hide and distribute images of child abuse online, a computer security firm warned on Tuesday.

 

Sophos cited a report by the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) showing the site hosting the offending image displays different content, depending on the referring website.

 

“(I)f you simply typed in the URL of a website you might be presented with legal, adult pornography. However, if the same website is visited via a particular gateway, the website would know where its traffic has been referred from and display child abuse images instead,” Sophos said in a blog post.

 

Thus, when a visitor reports the page hosting child abuse content to authorities, an analyst examining the reporting URL may only find legal adult content.

 

Sophos said the IWF encountered the technique nearly 600 times during 2011, and is now working with its partners around the world to tackle the trend.

 

“It’s vitally important to invest in combating the inventiveness of child abusers. We intercept new methods of distributing images of abuse all too often, and we’re committed to reporting all instances to the authorities that identify perpetrators and rescue victims,” said Mark Harris, VP of SophosLabs and Global Engineering Operations at Sophos.

 

IWF is the UK internet hotline for the public to report inadvertent exposure to online child sexual abuse content hosted anywhere in the world.

 

The public may also report non-photographic child sexual abuse images, criminally obscene adult content and incitement to racial hatred content hosted in the UK.

 

Sophos said it supports the IWF’s aims and is working with them to protect internet users from inadvertent exposure to child sexual abuse images.

 

“From time to time SophosLabs encounters website content and images in spam which are extremely disturbing, and where appropriate we report these to the IWF,” it said. — TJD, GMA News