Child abuse photo collector forgets to encrypt his USB stick – Bad security is a good thing

Sometimes some good can come from poor computer security.

The Burton Mail reports that a 46-year-old British man was found guilty of downloading indecent images of children after he accidentally shared his USB memory stick with a work colleague.

According to reports, Nicholas Hill, of Belvoir Crescent, Newhall, handed a memory stick to a female colleague in order to get a recording of a TV programme, but as soon as his workmate plugged the USB drive into her computer she was shocked to be presented with an array of indecent photos.

Clearly, Hill had not encrypted the data on his USB flash drive.

When police were called they found “279 images in the mildest category and six which were slightly more serious” contained on the memory stick…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the anti-virus industry having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent security analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of computer security, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter at @gcluley, on Mastodon at @[email protected], or drop him an email.