Remember the Twinkie defense? Well, now there's the Trojan horse defense. That's right: In three recent court cases in the United Kingdom, defendants pleaded not guilty on the basis that someone else put code on their computer (via a Trojan horse) that caused their machines to break the law.

While these cases have no direct bearing on U.S. court cases, they could lead to creative defenses for computer-related crimes in this country as well.

The first two cases involved the downloading of child pornography, while the third concerned a denial-of-service attack that caused real-world economic damage. All three defendants were acquitted.

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