Apparently, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children provides ISPs with a hash database of known illegal images [1]. ISPs are then required by statute to notify the government when images with matching hashes cross their network [2].
It's a way to scan millions of computers without the owners of those computers knowing they are even being checked. It's perfect.
It also begs the question can you get around detection by re-encoding the files so the hashes don't match?
Didn't try mutating the test vector.
No, it was a short string, not an image. If it was an image, I would have tried various mutations.
Because of this, I assumed at the time, and still do, that it's a simple digest instead of a context aware image description.
And it phoned "home" instead of alerting the user - even the institutional user.
If an attacker has the power to create a non-CP file that has the same hash as a CP file and plant it without detection, they have the power to plant a CP file without detection. Why would they go to the effort to create a collision with a non-CP file? It's wasted effort.
There's no evidence of other images of child sexual abuse on his machine; there's no history of sites that distribute images of child sexual abuse; there's no history of the file being opened by Bob; Bob claims that he didn't know the file was there and he doesn't know what it is.
How does that benefit an attacker? How does that benefit an attacker more than just taking actual images of child sexual abuse and putting those on Bob's computer?
People can come up with crazy scenarios for anything :)
>"[t]he duty to provide public services is owed to the public at large, and, absent a special relationship between the police and an individual, no specific legal duty exists."
Isn't that what they're going for? I certainly haven't seen any signs of intent to correct or rehabilitate the convicted for many crimes. The Department of Corrections should just be called the Department of Punishment, in my opinion, though that's perhaps not as catchy.
That said, the UK equivalent, the IWF (Internet Watch Foundation) effectively blacklisted Wikipedia, because of the Scorpions' album cover: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Watch_Foundation_and_...