A Spanish voyeur has waved goodbye to more than €4,000 after spying on a young woman using her own webcam. Known only as G.J.A.L the science student was fined after randomly picking his victim in January 2002 and spending months monitoring her activity.
Remarkably, industry watchers insist the webcam hack was relatively easy.
"We have seen a dramatic growth in trojan horses which allow hackers to spy in this way," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at anti-virus company Sophos. "It's remarkably simple to spy on another computer user, reading their emails, watching which websites they visit, and even taking pictures of them in front of their computer."
The Spaniard was fined €3,000 and a further €3 a day for a year for his offence which included spying on online conversations, illicitly taking images of the victim while she was in her house and monitoring emails.
According to Cluley traojan horses capable of performing such fuctions are widely available online.
In January SC reported Spanish police arrested a 37 year old Spanish man in an operation known as "Tic-Tac". The man was accused of writing and distributing a trojan horse capable of compromising webcams.
