Art.609-bis c.p. : Chiunque, con violenza o minaccia o mediante abuso di autorità costringe taluno a compiere o subire atti sessuali è punito con la reclusione da sei a dodici anni.

Alla stessa pena soggiace chi induce taluno a compiere o subire atti sessuali:
1) abusando delle condizioni di inferiorità fisica o psichica della persona offesa al momento del fatto;
2) traendo in inganno la persona offesa per essersi il colpevole sostituito ad altra persona.

Nei casi di minore gravità la pena è diminuita in misura non eccedente i due terzi.

Il contenuto della norma

Un tema relativamente nuovo è quello della violenza sessuale realizzata a distanza attraverso le tecnologie dell’informazione. Sempre più frequenti, infatti, sono i casi in cui un soggetto, attraverso l’installazione di una web cam chiede prestazioni sessuali ad altra persona o impone alla stessa di assistere a suoi atti di autoerotismo.

Sul piano giuridico, non essendovi norma specifica, occorre necessariamente far riferimento all’art.609-bis, che punisce, come violenza sessuale, la condotta di colui che con violenza o minaccia o mediante abuso di autorità costringa taluno a compiere o subire atti sessuali e quella di colui che induca un altro soggetto a compiere o subire atti sessuali abusando delle condizioni di inferiorità fisica o psichica della persona offesa al momento del fatto o traendo in inganno la persona offesa per essersi il colpevole sostituito ad altra persona.

Vista la formulazione dell’art.609- bis si è posto il problema di comprendere se sia ipotizzabile una violenza sessuale attraverso la rete.

La Giurisprudenza, come illustriamo di seguito, pare dare al momento risposta affermativa.

Cosa dice la giurisprudenza

Risponde di violenza sessuale – e non di estorsione – colui che, dietro la minaccia di diffusione di video sessualmente espliciti, costringa la vittima ad inviargli su Whatsapp foto delle proprie parti intime ( Cass., Sez. II, sent. n. 41985/21).

Perfeziona la fattispecie di violenza sessuale la condotta consistente nell’invio di una serie di messaggi whatsapp allusivi e sessualmente espliciti ad una minorenne , costringendola a realizzare selfie da contenuti intimi da inviare al soggetto agente, con la minaccia di pubblicare la chat su un social network (Cass.,Sez.III,sent.n.25266/20).

La Corte di Cassazione ha confermato la condanna per violenza sessuale realizzata mediante l’utilizzo di social network e webcam. Nel caso di specie, in particolare, il soggetto, attraverso le suddette tecnologie, aveva compiuto atti di autoerotismo dopo essersi assicurato che alcune minori lo avrebbero guardato attraverso webcam (Cass., Sez. III, sent. n. 16616/15).

In relazione all’art. 609-bis, c.1, c.p. si è più volte ribadito che il reato di violenza sessuale non sia esclusivamente caratterizzato dal contatto corporeo, potendosi estrinsecare anche nel compimento di atti di autoerotismo effettuati a seguito di costrizione o induzione ( Cass. , Sez.III, sent.n.37076/12).

Si è esclusa la possibilità di applicare “automaticamente” ai casi di violenza sessuale virtuale la circostanza attenuante speciale del fatto di lieve entità. Si è a tal riguardo precisato, infatti, che, ai fini dell’accertamento della diminuente prevista dall’art. 609 – bis, c. 3, c.p., debba farsi riferimento, oltre che alla materialità del fatto, a tutte le modalità che hanno caratterizzato la condotta criminosa, nonché al danno arrecato alla parte lesa, anche e soprattutto in considerazione dell’età della stessa o di altre condizioni psichiche in cui versi (Cass., Sez.III, sent.n.16615/15; Cass., Sez.III, sent. n. 45604/07).

L'articolo Digital Crime: La violenza sessuale virtuale proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

When thinking about loops in programming languages, they often get simplified down to a conditions section and a body, but this belies the dizzying complexity that emerges when considering loop edge cases within the context of static analysis. A paper titled Misconceptions about Loops in C by [Martin Brain] and colleagues as presented to SOAP 2024 conference goes through a whole list of false assumptions when it comes to loops, including for languages other than C. Perhaps most interesting is the conclusion that these ‘edge cases’ are in fact a lot more common than generally assumed, courtesy of how creative languages and their users can be when writing their code, with or without dragging in the meta-language of C’s preprocessor.

Assumptions like loop equivalence can fall apart when considering the CFG ( control flow graph) interpretation versus a parse tree one where the former may e.g. merge loops. There are also doozies like assuming that the loop body will always exist, that the first instruction(s) in a loop are always the entry point, and the horrors of estimating loop exits in the context of labels, inlined functions and more. Some languages have specific loop control flow features that differ from C (e.g. Python’s for/else and Ada’s loop), all of which affect a static analysis.

Ultimately, writing a good static analysis tool is hard, and there are plenty of cases where it’s likely to trip up and give an invalid result. A language which avoids ambiguity (e.g. Ada) helps immensely here, but for other languages it helps to write your code as straightforward as possible to give the static analysis tool a fighting chance, or just get really good at recognizing confused static analysis tool noises.

(Heading image: Control flow merges can create multiple loop entry
edges (Credit: Martin Brand, et al., SOAP 2024) )

Die photo of the Intel Pentium processor with standard cells highlighted in red. The edges of the chip suffered some damage when I removed the metal layers. (Credit: Ken Shirriff)
Whereas the CPUs and similar ASICs of the 1970s had their transistors laid out manually, with the move from LSI to VLSI, it became necessary to optimize the process of laying out the transistors and the metal interconnects between them. This resulted in the development of standard-cells: effectively batches of transistors with each a specific function that could be chained together. First simple and then more advanced auto-routing algorithms handled the placement and routing of these standard elements, leading to dies with easily recognizable structures under an optical microscope. Case in point an original (P54C) Intel Pentium, which [Ken Shirriff] took an in-depth look at.

Using a by now almost unimaginably large 600 nm process, the individual elements of these standard cells including their PMOS and NMOS components within the BiCMOS process can be readily identified and their structure reverse-engineered. What’s interesting about BiCMOS compared to CMOS is that the former allows for the use of bipolar junction transistors, which offer a range of speed, gain and output impedance advantages that are beneficial for some part of a CPU compared to CMOS. Over time BiCMOS’ advantages became less pronounced and was eventually abandoned.

All in all, this glimpse at the internals of a Pentium processor provides a fascinating snapshot of high-end Intel semiconductor prowess in the early 1990s.

(Top image: A D flip-flop in the Pentium. Credit: [Ken Shirriff] )

Cars have had DRM-like measures for longer than you might think. Go back to the 1990s, and coded cassette decks were a common way to stop thieves being able to use stolen stereos. Sadly, they became useless if you ever lost the code. [Simon] had found a deck in great condition that was locked out, so he set about building his own controller for it.

The build relies on the cassette transport of a car stereo and a VFD display, but everything else was laced together by Simon. It’s a play-only setup, with no record, seeing as its based on an automotive unit. [Simon]’s write up explains how he reverse engineered the transport, figuring out how the motors and position sensors worked to control the playback of a cassette.

[Simon] used an Atmega microcontroller as the brains of the operation, which reads the buttons of the original deck via an ADC pin to save I/O for other tasks. The chip also drives the VFD display for user feedback, and handles auto reverse too. The latter is thanks to the transport’s inbuilt light barriers, which detect the tape’s current status. On the audio side, [Simon] whipped up his own head amplifier to process the signal from the tape head itself.

Fundamentally, it’s a basic build, but it does work. We’ve seen other DIY tape decks before, too. There’s something about this format that simply refuses to die. The fans just won’t let Compact Cassette go down without a fight. Video after the break.

youtube.com/embed/mDLw054vONI?…

Reverse-engineered schematics are de rigeur around these parts, largely because they’re often the key to very cool hardware hacks. We don’t get to see many mechanical reverse-engineering efforts, though, which is a pity because electronic hacks often literally don’t stand on their own. That’s why these reverse-engineered mechanical diagrams of the Quansheng UV-K5 portable amateur radio transceiver really caught our eye.

Part of the reason for the dearth of mechanical diagrams for devices, even one as electrically and computationally hackable as the UV-K5, is that mechanical diagrams are a lot less abstract than a schematic or even firmware. Luckily, this fact didn’t daunt [mdlougheed] from putting a stripped-down UV-K5 under a camera for a series of images to gather the raw data needed by photogrammetry package RealityCapture. The point cloud was thoughtfully scaled to match the dimensions of the radio’s reverse-engineered PC board, so the two models can work together.

The results are pretty impressive, especially for a first effort, and should make electromechanical modifications to the radio all the easier to accomplish. Hats off to [mdlougheed] for the good work, and let the mechanical hacks begin.