UK and Sweden Enact Laws Against Cyber Crimes

Hackers Given A Message: DoS is a Crime

November 7, 2006 - The UK passed a new law today against cyber crime. The law targets DoS (Denial of Service) attackers with punishments up to 10 years in prison. The law clarifies Britain's Computer Misuse Act, because the old legislation did not address DoS attacks specifically. The original act only mentioned penalties for modifying content on a computer without authorization. Because of the ambiguity in the old law, teenager David Lennon was cleared of all charges after being accused of sending his former boss 5 million emails.

A DoS attack means flooding a server with huge quantities of data (such as emails or server requests) until the server collapses. A DDoS attack (Distributed Denial of Service) is a more advanced DoS attack, where more than one computer is used to send the data or requests to the server. Both DoS and DDos attacks are prosecuted under the same laws.

According to the new 2006 Act, impairing the operation of any computer, preventing access to any program or data in a computer, and restricting the operation of any program on a computer, are all crimes and are punishable with a maximum of 10 years in prison. Also, causing someone else to do any or all of these crimes can get you into prison for 2 years.

The UK also wants it to be illegal to create and distribute hacking tools. The problem is that the differences between a tool used to test a network for vulnerabilities and a hacking tool are close to none. Critics want to know how a judge could determine the difference between the two tools. The government has provided some guidelines and explained that using these tools is a crime only if used to commit cyber crime. For the moment, it is still legal to create and/or distribute "hacking tools" until 2008, when the new laws will be in force.

From June 1, 2007, Sweden bans all website attacks, like DoS attacks. Sweden calls it a crime to program computers to automatically click on the same page thousands of times. This comes in response to the attacks on the Swedish national police website and other government websites. Attackers can be found guilty and receive up to 2 years in prison. The new law declares both automatic and manual DoS attacks illegal. Prosecutors will have to show the court that the attack was of criminal intent and that it was intended to damage a computer system. Simply trying to launch an attack is also to be considered criminal act.

These new laws are intended to make hackers think twice before committing a DoS attack. They now know that their act is a criminal one and will be pursued according to criminal laws. Any DoS attacker can face up to 10 years in prison, so it is hoped that the number of attacks will decrease as a result of these new laws against cyber crime.

Source: OUT-LAW

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