Hackers put Telstra in filter bind

THE voluntary internet filter for child abuse is facing a major setback, with Telstra wavering on the commitment it made to the scheme.

THE voluntary internet filter for child abuse is facing a major setback, with Telstra wavering on the commitment it made to the scheme last July.

At the time Telstra public policy director David Quilty said Telstra was happy to implement the filter in response to a call by Communications Minister Stephen Conroy.

However, a Telstra spokeswoman last night confirmed that the telco had yet to make a firm decision on whether to implement the filter.

She said Telstra remained committed to working with the federal government to reduce the availability of child abuse material on the net.

"We continue to work with the Australian Federal Police to disrupt the availability of child sexual abuse content in Australia," the spokeswoman said.

"One option being considered is the blocking of a list of illegal child sexual abuse sites identified as being the worst globally by international policing body Interpol."

The filter focuses exclusively on internet child abuse material from a list maintained by the AFP in co-operation with international law-enforcement agencies.

Optus said last night it remained committed to the filter, but without Telstra the number of internet users within its scope would fall dramatically.

There were signs the federal government was prepared to be flexible on its strategy for dealing with and blocking online child abuse material. A spokesman for Senator Conroy said: "We are still working through the details of the voluntary arrangements with the ISPs and details have not yet been finalised."

It is understood Telstra was last night still grappling with the decision as to whether to commit to the voluntary filter because of fears of reprisals from the internet vigilantes behind a spate of recent cyber attacks.

It is understood the unstructured collective of hackers that identifies itself as Lulz Security, which has an agenda to wreak havoc on corporate and government cyber assets, claiming this is to expose security flaws, is one of Telstra main concerns.

LulzSec has claimed responsibility for attacks on the US Central Intelligence Agency, the US PBS and most recently it released a swath of Arizona law-enforcement documents.

On Tuesday, one of the suspected hackers, Ryan Cleary, 19, was arrested in England in a joint Scotland Yard and FBI operation. He has been charged with closing down the website of Britain's Serious Organised Crime Agency.

The other main concern is a group that identifies itself as Anonymous, another unstructured hacker collective that claims to be opposed to any form of internet censorship, and has carried out attacks on Australian government websites because of Canberra's support for an internet filter on child pornography.

Patrick Gray, host of information security podcast Risky Business said the carriers' fears were well-founded.

"If they think there's a laugh in something and it ties in with their politics, they might have a go, sure," he said. "It's all about the lulz (laughs) for them."