Webcam peeping tom: Hacker jailed after spying on computer users using their own cameras

By Neil Sears

Last updated at 1:47 PM on 24th November 2010

• 18 months for father of five, 33, who operated from mother’s front room in Scottish Highlands
• He downloaded intimate pictures, CVs and even a medical letter

A hacker spied on countless computer users by manipulating their home webcams.

Matthew Anderson, 33, is understood to have sent out 50million ‘spam’ emails containing an attachment for recipients to click on.

All of those who did so – believed to be 200,000 – had their computer infected with a virus that left it effectively ‘enslaved’.

Anderson was then able to rifle through private files and saved photographs – and even switch on web cameras attached to the computers.

At his leisure he then sat spying into the living rooms or bedrooms of strangers. The victims will have been completely unaware of his watching eyes.

When he was caught in a four-year police operation, officers found he had stored pictures and film of dozens of people in their own homes.

Among clips was that of a 16-year-old girl bursting into tears when Anderson began changing words on her computer screen.

He then gloated to a fellow hacker about tormenting her, revealing he had been using her webcam for hours, viewing her sisters, and lamenting the fact they were not naked.

Anderson was working in an international hacking gang called ‘m00p’ with at least three others. Only one other, from Finland, has been caught.

He was jailed for 18 months today after pleading guilty to ‘unauthorised modification of computer systems’ at Southwark Crown Court in London.

However, he is likely to serve just nine months. The court heard the father-of-five, who was born in Rochdale, carried out his crimes in the home of his mother Ruth, 54, in Banffshire, Scotland.

He claimed through his barrister that he joined online chatrooms after being left house-bound by panic attacks in his early 20s.

Publicly he ran a computer security firm – offering to protect clients, ironically, from people like himself.

Simon Ward, defending, said Anderson was motivated by ‘the feeling of power that comes from the knowledge that you have control over something that others don’t know you have the control of’.

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