Spyware Assists FBI in Catching Tor Web Browser-Accessed Child Pornography Perpetrator

Law enforcement agencies are steadily coming down on malware marketers and hackers who spread malware for a living. The FBI has been one force that has been fresh on the tail of hackers and malware perpetrators for many years, dating almost back to when the first computer viruses were on the scene spread over the Internet.

As you would have it, in the FBI's latest malware tracking efforts, they have caught and captured a Child Pornography suspect. Through the use of spyware software, the FBI was able to track down an individual who utilized Tor to access, view and download sexually-explicit content depicting children.

An individual by the name of Luis Escobosa, a US citizen living in Staten Island, NY, has been caught in the act of doing some seriously dirty deeds over the internet in the form of child pornography. The FBI conducted an operation that deployed spyware on a web server that hosted child pornography images to aid in detecting who is viewing such content.

Through the use of spyware software, the FBI was empowered to spy essentially on who was taking advantage of the illegal content stored on a server that they were able to infiltrate. With the logs and other data stored on the child porn server being nearly useless for tracking down those who used the site associated with the server's content.

As we known all-too-well, use of the Tor browser is a slightly different experience from use of traditional browsers, such as Google Chrome, Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox. Tor browser, by default, turns off items like the Flash plugin and enable the ability to browse the Dark Web, an area of the internet that users overlay networks limiting its public exposure and is only accessible by specialized software. Such an area of the internet is ideal for harboring illegal content, which is the case of the FBI hunting down the recent child pornography perpetrator.

One of the give-way factors for the FBI in tracking down the child pornography perpetrator, was the fact that turning the Flash player plugin on when he used the Tor browser, gave his location away to the FBI and they were then able to make their arrest. By obtaining Escobosa's location from his ISP, the FBI orchestrated a raid at this house and then seized his computer. As suspected, the FBI found an abundant amount of image thumbnails from the child porn site, despite that idea of Tor browser being able to wipe a person's web history and adjacent files clean after each use.

After Escobosa's arrest, the FBI subjected him to a lie detector test to find out if he was engaged in any physical acts with children. Reportedly, Escobosa passed the test and is free on a $150,000 bail bond.

As crafty as the tasks taken by the FBI seem, it should be known that there are thousands of individuals just as sick-minded as Escobosa, who may also utilize tools like the Tor browser to access Dark Web sites and servers that deliver illegal content. Efforts to provide antimalware products are clearly helping law enforcement agencies like the FBI bring down the Escobosas of the world.