Trojan Horse’s Sub7 Program Lead to Child Pornography Convictions

An Alabama man tries again to throw out his conviction instigated by a hacker who broke into his computer and found child pornography. The convicted man identified as Bradley Joseph Steiger, who had worked as an emergency room physician in Alabama. In early 2000, a computer hacker who used the now-defunct e-mail address [email protected] seeded a Usenet newsgroup called alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.pre-teen with the use of Trojan Horse program called SubSeven or Sub7. Sub7 installs a backdoor in the victim’s computer and can allow files to be extracted and a keystroke logger to be installed.

On July 16, 2000, “1069” sent e-mail to the Montgomery, Ala., Police Department saying, “I found a child molester on the Net.” The e-mail included an attached photograph of what looked like a girl no older than 6 being sexually abused. The information led back to a computer owned by Steiger. He was convicted of sexual exploitation of children, possession of a computer containing child pornography, and receipt of child pornography, and was sentenced to more than 17 years in prison. Since his conviction, Steiger tried to overturn it, his latest is by filing legal briefs he wrote himself, one of them was filed last month alleging that FBI agents who testified may have withheld evidence relating to the identity of “1069” and that a new trial is necessary.

U.S. District Judge W. Harold Albritton ruled out his request on Aug 2, saying: “There is simply no basis from which to conclude that Unknown User 1069 was acting as an informant of the FBI so as to allow for discovery as to whether the FBI concealed information”.

An Alabama man tries again to throw out his conviction instigated by a hacker who broke into his computer and found child pornography. The convicted man identified as Bradley Joseph Steiger, who had worked as an emergency room physician in Alabama. In early 2000, a computer hacker who used the now-defunct e-mail address [email protected] seeded a Usenet newsgroup called alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.pre-teen with the use of Trojan Horse program called SubSeven or Sub7. Sub7 installs a backdoor in the victim’s computer and can allow files to be extracted and a keystroke logger to be installed.

On July 16, 2000, “1069” sent e-mail to the Montgomery, Ala., Police Department saying, “I found a child molester on the Net.” The e-mail included an attached photograph of what looked like a girl no older than 6 being sexually abused. The information led back to a computer owned by Steiger. He was convicted of sexual exploitation of children, possession of a computer containing child pornography, and receipt of child pornography, and was sentenced to more than 17 years in prison. Since his conviction, Steiger tried to overturn it, his latest is by filing legal briefs he wrote himself, one of them was filed last month alleging that FBI agents who testified may have withheld evidence relating to the identity of “1069” and that a new trial is necessary.

U.S. District Judge W. Harold Albritton ruled out his request on Aug 2, saying: “There is simply no basis from which to conclude that Unknown User 1069 was acting as an informant of the FBI so as to allow for discovery as to whether the FBI concealed information”.