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Bloomberg

Agence France-Presse

Law enforcement officials said they had arrested hundreds of people worldwide after knocking out a South Korea-based dark web child pornography site that sold gruesome videos for digital cash.
Officials from the United States, Britain and South Korea on Wednesday described the network as one of the largest child pornography operations they had encountered to date.
Called Welcome To Video, the website relied on the bitcoin cryptocurrency to sell access to 250,000 videos depicting child sexual abuse, authorities said, including footage of extremely young children being raped.
Its upload page specifically stated: “Do not upload adult porn.”
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“Darknet sites that profit from the sexual exploitation of children are among the most vile and reprehensible forms of criminal behaviour,” US Assistant Attorney General Brian Benczkowski said.
Officials have rescued at least 23 underage victims in the US, Britain and Spain who were being actively abused by users of the site, the Justice Department said. Many children in the videos have not yet been identified.
The site’s vast library – nearly half of it consisting of images never seen before by law enforcement – is an illustration of what authorities say is an explosion of sexual abuse content online. In a statement, Britain’s National Crime Agency said officials were seeing “increases in severity, scale and complexity”.
Welcome To Video’s operator, a 23-year-old South Korean named Son Jong-woo, and 337 users in 12 different countries, have been charged so far, authorities said.
Son, currently serving an 18-month sentence in South Korea, was also indicted on federal charges in Washington.
Darknet sites that profit from the sexual exploitation of children are among the most vile and reprehensible forms of criminal behaviour
Brian Benczkowski, US assistant attorney general
Several other people charged in the case have already been convicted and are serving prison sentences of up to 15 years, according to the US Justice Department.
Welcome To Video is one of the first websites to monetise child pornography using bitcoin, which allows users to hide their identities during financial transactions.
Users were able to redeem the digital currency in return for “points” that they could spend downloading videos or buying all-you-can watch “VIP” accounts. Points could also be earned by uploading fresh child pornography.
“These are the bottom feeders of the criminal world,” said Don Fort, chief of criminal investigation at the US Internal Revenue Service, which initiated the investigation.
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The Justice Department said the site collected at least US$370,000 worth of bitcoin before it was taken down in March 2018 and that the currency was laundered through three unnamed digital currency exchanges.
Darknet websites are designed to be all but impossible to locate online. How authorities managed to locate and bring down the site isn’t clear, with differing narratives by different law enforcement organisations on the matter.
Fort said the investigation was triggered by a tip to the IRS from a confidential source.
However, Britain’s National Crime Agency said they came across the site during an investigation into a British academic who in October 2017 pleaded guilty to blackmailing more than 50 people, including teenagers, into sending him depraved images that he shared online.
Why some Filipino families are coercing children to perform cybersex
In a statement, British authorities said the National Crime Agency’s cybercrime unit deployed “specialist capabilities” to identify the server’s location. The NCA did not immediately return an email seeking clarification on the term, which is sometimes used as a euphemism for hacking.
The US Justice Department gave a different explanation, saying that Welcome To Video’s site was leaking its server’s South Korean internet protocol address to the open internet.
Experts pointed to the bust as evidence that the trade in child abuse imagery could be tackled without subverting the encryption that keeps the rest of the internet safe.
Officials in the US and elsewhere have recently begun prodding major technology firms to come up with solutions that could allow law enforcement to bypass the encryption that protects messaging apps like WhatsApp or iMessage, citing the fight against child pornography as a major reason.
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Welcome To Video’s demise “is a clear indication that in cases like this, where there’s very low-hanging fruit, breaking encryption is not required,” said Christopher Parsons, a senior research associate at Citizen Lab, based at the University of Toronto’s Munk School.
He said the bust showed that law enforcement could also track criminal activity that employs cryptocurrency transactions.
“There’s a lot of a people who have this perception that bitcoin is totally anonymous, and it’s been the downfall of many people in many investigations,” Parsons said.


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Crime

South Korean man who ran Darknet child porn site busted, leading to 337 arrests in 38 countries

The child pornography website, which encouraged users to upload videos, included hundreds of thousands of illicit images. File photo: SCMP

‘My life is not your porn’: South Korean women fight back against hidden-camera sex crimes

Women protest hidden-camera pornography in Seoul, South Korea. Photo: Crystal Tai

Female protesters shout slogans during a rally against 'spy-cam porn' in central Seoul on August 4, 2018. The target of their fury: so-called "molka" or spycam videos which largely involve men secretly filming women in schools, offices, trains, toilets and changing rooms and which are so prevalent they make headlines on a daily basis. / AFP PHOTO / Ed JONES

Police stand guard to prevent male journalists from entering an all-female protest against 'spy-cam porn' in central Seoul on August 4, 2018. The target of their fury: so-called "molka" or spycam videos which largely involve men secretly filming women in schools, offices, trains, toilets and changing rooms and which are so prevalent they make headlines on a daily basis. / AFP PHOTO / Ed JONES

Photo: Associated Press

Women protesting against hidden camera pornography in Seoul, South Korea, on October 6, 2018. 06OCT18. SCMP / Crystal Tai

Number of child porn cases hit record high 2,000 cases in Japan, as cybercrimes increase in 2018

The rise in cybercrimes in Japan is “serious”, say Japanese police. Photo: Kyodo

Koichiro Wada, president of cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck, bows in apology at the start of a press conference in Tokyo on Jan. 26, 2018, after around 58 billion yen ($534 million) of the NEM cryptocurrency disappeared due to hacking. (Kyodo) ==Kyodo

Webcam child sex: why Filipino families are coercing children to perform cybersex

Activists warn that poverty combined with increasing internet access means the number of victims is rising – and they are getting younger

Teenage girls rescued from a Philippines cybersex den. Picture: AFP

In this April 20, 2017, photo, a young girl's jean shorts are seen on the floor of the home of suspected child webcam cybersex operator, David Timothy Deakin, from Peoria, Ill., as investigators gather evidence during a raid in Mabalacat, Philippines. Children's underwear, toddler shoes, cameras, bondage cuffs, fetish ropes, meth pipes, stacks of hard drives and photo albums cluttered the stuffy, two-bedroom townhouse. In his computer files, there were videos and images of children engaged in sex acts. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)

This handout image shows Sam Inocencio, national director for the International Justice Mission (IJM), NEW.jpg [24JUNE2018 FEATURE POST MAGAZINE] CREDIT: YOUTUBE / Sam Inocencio

In this April 20, 2017, photo, a member of the National Bureau of Investigation Anti-human Trafficking division displays bondage cuffs used for sexual acts during a raid at the home of suspected child webcam cybersex operator, David Timothy Deakin, from Peoria, Ill., in Mabalacat, Philippines. Deakin's arrest reveals one of the darkest corners of the internet, where pedophiles in the U.S., Canada, Europe and Australia pay facilitators on the other side of the world to sexually abuse children, directing their moves through online livestreaming services. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)

This handout image shows Lotta Sylwander, country director (PHILIPPINES) for the United Nations children’s agency Unicef. [24JUNE2018 FEATURE POST MAGAZINE] CREDIT: CREDIT: Lotta Sylwander / UNICEF

In this April 20, 2017, photo, computer hard drives are gathered by members of the National Bureau of Investigation Anti-human Trafficking division during a raid at the home of suspected child webcam cybersex operator, David Timothy Deakin, from Peoria, Ill., in Mabalacat, Philippines. Deakin's arrest reveals one of the darkest corners of the internet, where pedophiles in the U.S., Canada, Europe and Australia pay facilitators on the other side of the world to sexually abuse children, directing their moves through online livestreaming services. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)

This handout image shows Damian Kean, a spokesman for End Child Prostitution and Trafficking International (Ecpat),. [24JUNE2018 FEATURE POST MAGAZINE] CREDIT: Twitter / Damian Kean /@DamersK

Ruby, a survivor of webcam sex slavery, at a church in Tagaytay, in the Philippines. Picture: Thomson Reuters Foundation

News

Asia

East Asia

World

United States & Canada


Son Jong-woo, 23, is accused of running a Darknet website that accepted bitcoin and distributed over 1 million sexually explicit videos involving children
Authorities say they rescued at least 23 minor victims in the US, Britain and Spain who were being actively abused by the site’s users



Son Jong-woo, 23, is accused of running a Darknet website that accepted bitcoin and distributed over 1 million sexually explicit videos involving children.


United States

South Korea

Bitcoin

Sexual harassment and assault

South Korean man who ran Darknet child porn site busted, leading to 337 arrests in 38 countries

Son Jong-woo, 23, is accused of running a Darknet website that accepted bitcoin and distributed over 1 million sexually explicit videos involving children Authorities say they rescued at least 23 minor victims in the US, Britain and Spain who were being actively abused by the site’s users

Son Jong-woo, 23, is accused of running a Darknet website that accepted bitcoin and distributed over 1 million sexually explicit videos involving children

Authorities say they rescued at least 23 minor victims in the US, Britain and Spain who were being actively abused by the site’s users