funsec mailing list archives
The Julie Amero situation
From: "Alex Eckelberry" <AlexE () sunbelt-software com>
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2007 12:46:43 -0500
(Feel free to forward to others as applicable). Many of you have been following the plight of Julie Amero, the happless substitute teacher in Norwich, CT who is facing up to 40 years in prison for having porn popups on a classroom computer. According to the defense's forensic expert, the popups were spawned by a javascript bomb on her machine. (If you want to catch up on this story, Brian Krebs wrote a good overview, and you can also read my editorial. Links http://tinyurl.com/2kbmxp and http://tinyurl.com/3au7cz and http://tinyurl.com/3bo2kk.) We actually have an image of the drive here at our offices and are performing our own forensic analysis of it. The results will be available to interested parties in the next few days. Sentencing is on March 2nd, and a number of concerned industry folks are lobbying on her behalf. (A lot of work is also going in to getting her good pro bono representation for the appeals process. But the appeals process can be an iffy one itself.) We have been very active on this case, talking to the defense, the prosecution, the expert forensic witness and Julie herself. To us, it's clear this is a grave miscarriage of justice. Due to some legal technicalities, quite a bit of exonerating evidence (such as the fact that the machine was loaded with spyware) was not allowed as testimony in the trial. There was also false testimony in the trial (such as the statement that "Julie had to have navigated to these sites"). The police used inadequate software for their analysis (ComputerCops Professional) and seem to continue to stick by their story that Julie navigated to these sites, despite all the physical evidence pointing to the fact that these were popups. The machine in question was an old Win 98SE machine running IE 5, with no antispwyare protection, an old antivirus program (Cheyenne), an expired content filter, no desktop firewall, no popup blocking and (according to the forensic expert), no or few patches installed. It was a disaster waiting to happen. We've also found a number of disturbing issues in the case which point to a typical "small town" witchunt. A lot of this I'd rather not speak of publicly, but there's quite a few troubling allegations that I've heard. Some industry people are considering taking out a full page advertisement in the local paper, asking for the prosecution and the judge to consider all the facts in the case, including the new information that has come out post-trial. The letter will be written in such a fashion that would allow a wide range of signatories to the document. If you are interested in possibly signing the letter, please contact me off-list. Also, I will see about setting up a temporary mailing list for this case for those who want to take an active part in the case. Any help is appreciated. And if anyone is going to RSA, I hope to see you there. Thanks, Alex Eckelberry ------------------------------------ Alex Eckelberry President Sunbelt Software 101 N. Garden Avenue Clearwater, FL 33755 e: alex () sunbelt-software com MSN: alexeck () hotmail com p: 727.562.0101 x220 f: 727.562.5199 w: www.sunbeltsoftware.com b: www.sunbeltblog.com ------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts. https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.
Current thread:
- The Julie Amero situation Alex Eckelberry (Jan 28)
- Re: The Julie Amero situation Brian Loe (Jan 28)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- Re: The Julie Amero situation Fergie (Jan 28)
- Re: The Julie Amero situation Brian Loe (Jan 29)