By Andy McCue, 15 October 2003 18:15
NEWS The jury retired on Wednesday afternoon to consider its verdict in the case of the UK teenager accused of bringing down the computer systems of a major US port with a denial of service attack. Aaron Caffrey, 19, has pleaded not guilty to unauthorised modifications of a computer contrary to Section 3 of the Computer Misuse Act 1990. The crime carries a maximum sentence of three years. A denial of service attack on the Port of Houston in Texas in 2001 was traced to a computer at Caffrey's home but he claimed his computer had been hijacked by two hackers, known as dryice and frixion, using a Trojan Horse to remotely control his PC without his knowledge. Caffrey said in his testimony that the hackers had used a wiping tool in the Trojan Horse to remove this evidence but the prosecution dismissed this as "technically impossible". The prosecution counsel's expert technical witness dismissed the defence and said a forensic examination found no tell-tale evidence of his computer having been hacked or any data tampered with. In the final day of testimony yesterday, a defence witness who was a friend of Caffrey's father, claimed it was technically possible for a Trojan to be written that could wipe evidence of it ever being there. However the court heard that Bowers, who was not on the register of expert witnesses or a member of the British Computer Society, had never seen this actually happen and was basing his testimony on what he had read in computer journals. Judge Loraine-Smith has ordered the 11 remaining jurors to retire until they can deliver a unanimous verdict.
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