A former University of Wisconsin student pleaded guilty to possession and distribution of child pornography Monday, an activity that he performed on the UW server.
Matthew Hendrickson now faces a maximum of 20 years in federal prison.
The investigation of his actions dates back more than a year. U.S. Attorney Office spokesperson Myra Longfield said an undercover FBI agent located in Los Angeles was monitoring a file sharing network called Gigatribe and noticed an individual was sharing child pornography images. The agent traced the IP address to the UW server and was then able to obtain a subpoena to trace the IP address of the computer to Hendrickson.
“A search warrant was issued Sept. 23, 2010, and [Hendrickson’s] computer was taken,” Longfield said.
Longfield said a search confirmed there were files containing pornographic images of children on Hendrickson’s computer.
Hendrickson was taken into custody July 1 in Minnesota, where he had his first court appearance, she said. He was then taken to appear in court in Madison, where he was released pending trail. After his guilty plea, he was taken into custody in Madison, where he will serve his sentence in the federal prison.
Hendrickson’s sentencing date is Jan. 13, 2012, and he will remain in custody until that time.
According to Brian Rust, spokesperson for UW’s Division of Information Technology, the university does not monitor its network to find file sharing like Hendriskson was doing. It is only standard for them to take a broad look at the activity on the network to ensure that it is not reaching capacity.
The network as a whole can track what percentage of people on the UW network are file sharing, but there is no way to tell whether it is legal or illegal. Though the security personal at DoIT do have the capacity to track files, it is not a priority for the university.
“We have much bigger things to worry about,” Rust said.
By using the IP address, you can trace where information comes from within a network. This is how they were able to find Hendrickson’s computer within the UW network.
While the university is not always tracking files, if someone has had threatening web content sent to them, they should report them to the police or the security personnel at DoIT. The security personnel are then able to track and verify the sender of said content, Rust said.
He added they are trained to work with the police to do forensics on the network or machines linked to the network to find information, but usually only do so when court ordered.
“We don’t monitor … what [activities] people are using the network for specifically,” Rust said. “But if the police department contacts us with a court ordered request to access files, emails or machines, we can access the information on it for forensics.”
