A 47-year-old man from Cyprus has been given a four-year jail sentence after hacking a teenage girl's webcam, in order to take illicit pictures of the young woman in her bedroom.
The man, who has not been named but is a computer technician in Nicosia, spied on the then 17-year-old girl through her webcam after infecting her PC with a spyware trojan that he sent her as an email attachment.
"Most spyware is designed to steal your identity, your passwords, your banking information — but it is just as easy to program a trojan to take over your webcam," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos.
"This case highlights that as well as malware being used for financial gain, it can also be used by voyeurs. Everyone needs to treat computer security as paramount importance to ensure they do not fall victim to an internet blackmailer or peeping tom."
Sophos notes that there have been other cases in the past where hackers have taken remote control of innocent users' webcams in order to spy on them.
Sophos experts note that the problem of poorly defended PCs does not just affect young home users, but workers too.
"Home and remote workers use computers often equipped with webcams and may have lax protection in place. The dangers of people using a ‘work’ computer for non-approved use such as instant messaging chat are well documented. Companies should deploy application control technology to set a strict policy as to which programs, such as chat clients, can be used by their employees," Cluley said.
Sophos recommends that companies protect their email gateways with a consolidated solution to defend against viruses, spyware and spam, as well as secure their desktop and servers with automatically updated protection.
