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R/£ 'Hacker downloaded child porn'
September 12, 2006 Edition 1
Monica Laganparsad
In what is believed to be the first case of its kind, a computer expert is due to give evidence in the Durban Regional Court on computer viruses.
The evidence will be led to counter the defence of Mark Rawlinson, 36, from Amanzimtoti, who has been charged with 1 159 counts of possession of child pornography and one count of allowing a child access to child pornography.
Rawlinson, who has pleaded not guilty to all charges, in his defence claimed that a hacker working with various computer viruses had caused the child pornography website to be downloaded.
Senior Superintendent Beau Grobler, head of the Technical Support Unit in Pretoria, will testify on the occurrences and effects of computer viruses. This type of technical computer evidence in child pornography is expected to be ground-breaking and believed to be the first of its kind.
Yesterday Sgt Susann Barnard, a computer technician from the technical support unit, told the court she was responsible for investigating Rawlinson's computer.
She said she had used internationally recognised software to make a mirror image of the hard drive. This software, she said, allows one to work off the "photocopied" hard drive without re-moving or adding any data.
Barnard said she had found 65 images in the "my pictures" folder of which 34 were possible child porn pictures. In total, she found 1 415 images, of which 1 194 were of children without clothes.
She also recovered 300 possible child pornography images in deleted files and 825 images in the temporary internet files.
She also testified that Rawlinson had installed anti-virus and firewall software on his computer, which prevented interference from hackers and viruses.
Under cross-examination, attorney Sam Garbaran told Barnard the hard drive had been moved from its original position in the tower. She replied that it had been beneath the stiffy drive when she received the tower.
He also indicated that there were screwdriver marks on the stiffy drive, suggesting there had been tampering. Barnard also told Garbaran that some of the images were downloaded from a website entitled "Lolita's".
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