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UK Parliament to ban DoS Attacks
Ian Hill writes "It seems that the UK government is not as technologically withdrawn as you may think.
This bill is an amendment to the Computer Misuse Act 1990 which bans Denial of Service attacks by name. It states that a person is guilty of an offence if they cause, or intend to cause, 'degradation, failure or other impairment of function of a computerised system.'"
Now no one will ever do it!
And the first two people charged will be:
Ian Hill and CmdrTaco for causing a slashdotting of the UK Parliament server!
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
I wonder if this will get passed before this.
Nope, no sig
So we slashdotted them with a link. How ironic. Can I rat out Taco for a reduced sentence?
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Wouldn't the slashdot effect be a way of degrading network performance?
Like installing windows?
(HA HA HA HA!! I Made a Funny!!!)
a hard drive tied to each testicle and tossed in the Thames. Or sat the very least a nice little midnoght visit from the SAS, and some 'questioning'.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts."
Every time I download a big movie or file from a fast server, I cause degredation to my connection, and so my computer system. How does one define at what point it is intentional, and at what point serious damage is done to the system?
So when the RIAA kills a file-sharing server in Scotland because US law specifically permits it, and when they are indicted because UK law specifically outlaws it, whose national sovereignty will be degraded?
It's ironic that this story was just posted earlier. Quick, move all your P2P servers to the UK, you'll be safe from the RIAA!
I don't think that counts, because we don't have any malicious intent. We just want to read the news which they have chosen to make available, so what if a bunch of people want to do it at once, with or without slashdot's help. But if some vengeful geek were to post a my website hosted on my cable modem in an effort to kill my connection, then I might get pissy.
--fetch daddy's blue fright wig, i must be handsome when i release my rage
> It states that a person is guilty of an offence if they cause, or intend to cause, 'degradation, failure or other impairment of function of a computerised system.'"
If they changed the wording just a little bit it would make Spammers face charges.
Of course, the whole impairment bit would make Microsoft criminals too. You know, I mean more so. Actually, isn't Windows XP designed to impair system preformance, forcing a hardware upgrade? Hmmmm....
Later.
All in one day, one county considering making DOS's legal (for P2P networks), one county trying to ban the practice.
Interesting.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
I guess the US p2p users will have to setup anonymous reflectors in the UK. Ya gotta love the global age we live in!
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
(don't ask me for a reference, I found it on a 'Stupid Laws' page that has subsequently shut down)
This is very good - I mean consider all of the damage that DOS could do to your machine. It's insecure, lacks multitasking, and requires users to configure EMM386 and HIMEM.SYS just to play Doom. Let's just hope that bin Laden doesn't have the technology available to perform a DOS install/attack on all of our machines.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
So will SPAM creators be targetable under the provisions? Massive amounts of email can easily be shown to take up CPU memory and processor time as well as all the messages consuming disk space. A small system can easily be overloaded by SPAM, so SPAM is clearly a source of degradation and impairment of function of the computer. Simply filling up an inbox on a system can prevent access to other mail and is demonstratable as denial of service.
SPAM is sent deliberatly with knowledge of the load affects.
Apply your argument to fire arms.
Murder is just another admittedly mean) use for the computer. The fact that guns are ilt in a way that allows murder is no reason to try to control what free citizens do with their legally obtained firearms.
Your argument seems to be based on because it is possible, is should be legal - which is anarchy.
The Computer Misuse act is criminal law not civil law anybody breaking goes to Prison.
Feel free to mod this as funny or troll, but I am perfectly serious. I like this bill: it's pithy, addresses a real problem, and is neither too narrow nor too broad. However, it occurs to me that the wording could be applied to writing a piece of buggy software.
"A person is guilty of an offence if without authorisation he does any act which causes directly or indirectly a degradation, failure, or other impairment or function of a computerised system or any part thereof. A person is guilty of the offence [...] even if the act was not intended to cause such an effect, provided that a reasonable person could have anticipated that the act would have caused such an effect. [...] the act is without authorisation if the person doing it does not have the permission of the owner [of the relevant computerised system or part thereof]."
So, I write a piece of code with a memory scribbler in it, say passing an unitialised pointer to memcpy(). The "act" is my typing of that specific line of code. Any reasonable person would anticipate that act would cause a degradation or failure on a system. Note: "a" system, not "my" system. I didn't intend it to cause failure, but I should (reasonably) have realised it would. And once I distribute the code, the damage is caused on many systems, none of which are owned by people who gave me permission (explicitely or even implicitely) to perform the "act", i.e. write that scribbler.
I'm certainly stretching a point, but my scenario satisfies the letter (if not the spirit) of the law. There's already a concept of criminal negligence; this would just be a specific case of it. The part that makes me pause is that the offence is caused by the individual coder, not by her employer.
So while this probably will never effect me, it gives me a little more incentive to make sure that I lint every line that I write, and damn the deadline. But hey, on balance that's a good thing, right? ;-)
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I cant read it as it is currently having an intentional degradation of access.
If the law does not specifically single out INTENTIONAL DoS attack and list accidental as a hold-harmless then the law is really really bad.
you can instantly DoS any network by plugging a switch into it's self or another switch that is connected back to that one and letting one piece of broadcast traffic flow (create a resonance in essence). and many other accidental things (Oops, I broke a Fiber run in the street with my backhoe.. will I be charged with multiple counts of this offense as I just disrupted many many persons/companies/etc...
if it isnt specific that it only covers INTENTIONAL acts then it needs to be thrown out now.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Man I hate DoS attacks. Hacking is one of those crimes I can't help but quietly cheer. Like graffiti and car chases, I find my self, for no good reason, quietly behind the bad guys. But DoS is the exception. It takes no skill and no talent. It isn't cool, it's just lame.
You hear that, kids? You are *lame*
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
So if you have website connected to your DSL, and the ISP changes the dynamic IP address... your site is down for 20 minutes while it contacts the dynamic dns service with the updated IP. Your site is down, your email is down, they've forced a denial of service on your website.
Does that count? It was intentional. It most certainly caused failure of service to your website. Any reasonable person with the knowlege of how DNS works could tell you a new IP will distrupt traffic. So will ISPs be forced to give out static IP addresses to anyone who asks?
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
Read the damn file! it reads:
A person is guilty of the offence in subsection (1)(a) even if the act was not intended to cause such an effect, provided that a reasonable person could have anticipated that the act would have caused such an effect.
this means no more posting of links on slashdot linking to UK sites lest Taco becomes an international criminal.
somebody in UK, please write your queen about this.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Now that they are banned, they won't happen anymore. Hey look, is that a flying pig?
Great Linux Site
In case anyone cares: it's here
It'll be Rep. Howard Berman of California and Hilary Rosen of the RIAA.
Well, how about this? This is great news considering that the States want to attack the P2P networks . Now the P2P networks will have a place to hide, because it will prove to be challenging to selectively remove the USA users, while avoiding those in the UK.
All in all, great news
Karma:This parrot is dead! (and so is the joke.)
Read on:
the act is without authorisation if the person doing it [...] does not have the permission of the owner
If you operate a public webserver you implicitly authorise Internet users to connect to it. A slashdotting is just a group of people doing something that has been authorised by the operator of the server, even if it is a very large group of people.
Is it legal to do it to an ex-girlfriend?
My other first post is car post.
Not a bad idea. I mean, downloading that 4k spam degrades my connection. Granted, not by very much, but it's still degraded.
By this logic, ANY communication over the net could be construed as a violation of this bill. You only have so much bandwidth, and the consumption of it will certainly degrade the connection. This is a very dangerous piece of legislation. It could have its uses, but it could be so broadly interpreted DMCA-style to make any Internet-using person a felon.
On the upside, I'm gonna set up an open relay in the UK and send any spammer that uses it (thereby degrading my connection and system performance) to jail.
You too are being a dumbass.
My other first post is car post.
That way it matches the women. Hey at least the brits are coordinated.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Man, you're full of shit anyway, there is no obligation to design things to prevent people from comitting crimes with them. Sure, it helps if we can come up with a technological solution rather than a legal one, but that's not always feasible.
The only problem with this law is that it's possibly overbroad, other than that, even as a Libertarian, I don't have a problem with it.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
The Earl of Northesk who has introduced this Bill is a Conservative peer, and so this is not a Government Bill.
For better or worse it is therefore most unlikely to become law, especially so close to the end of the Parliamentary year. Though if the UK Government notice that there is support for it, they could decide to introduce their own Bill next session, I suppose.
This is not a Government Bill - so has no real chance of getting passed - especially as it has been introduced so late in the session. I don't think it's even had a 2nd Reading debate.
Nice try, guys. But you need to update yourselves on the UK constitution.
"somebody in UK, please write your queen about this"
Concerted attempts have been made to wield the clue-stick in the direction of parliament, however, they're still thick as pigshit when it comes to computers:
The bill, as it stands, would outlaw everything which causes somebody else's computer to slow down without the owner's permission. Read the bill if you think I'm exaggerating.
That means, anytime you use a computer for anything, you are to some extent a criminal if this gets passed. Again, our MPs need some computer experience, p.d.q. if they think this is a good solution to d.o.s.!
(p.s. side issue, but if a program of yours is insecure (even with GPL's disclaimed liability) and your program causes someone else's computer to slow down, or to divert any resources away from its normal functioning, you'll have broken the law if this piece of legislation gets passed. Software liability by the back door?)
Not really.
George will talk to Tony, and everything will be smoothed over.
Trust me, the UK parliament is so nearly an American lap dog you'd swear it was wagging at times.
Cheers,
Tim
(UK citizen, born and bred)
It's official. Most of you are morons.
They propose a law to make those DoS attacks illegal.
We retaliate with another law to make any laws criminalizing our law that legalizes DoS attacks illegal.
They strike back with a law that makes it illegal to pass laws which make laws that that legalize DoS attacks illegal..
In furious anger and righteous indignation we pass a law tha...
I think I just hurt something in my head.
Do not taunt Happy-Fun Ball
"somebody in UK, please write your queen about this"
Didn't you know? We all know her here in the UK - I'll pass on your message next time I drop by for tea and scones...
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
bzzt. They're just posting a link; Of course, if you deep link, that could be illegal in some countries. Stupid countries. You follow the link. It's like the difference between rioting, and inciting a riot; inciting a riot is illegal, but unless they make inciting a DoS illegal, the slashdot effect isn't covered.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That's "onymous"
Concerted attempts have been made to wield the clue-stick in the direction of parliament, however, they're still thick as pigshit when it comes to computers:
:)
Maybe, since they obviously have some spare time on their hands, could hold a competition with the US Congress to find the least clueful legislator
The bill, as it stands, would outlaw everything which causes somebody else's computer to slow down without the owner's permission. Read the bill if you think I'm exaggerating.
It also appears to be utterly redundant, since the kind of things it seaks to outlaw are already illegal.
Holy shit, you made a joke about the difference between DoS (denial of service) and DOS (disk operating system). I've never seen a joke like this on Slashdot!
Holy shit, you made a joke about my joke because you waste 50% of your life reading Slashdot and critiquing jokes.
Keep up the creative and original work!
Keep up the not getting laid and using Slashdot to bump up your self esteem.
Q: What's the difference between being British and being English?
/. article discussed the RIAA's attempts to make it legal to DoS a P2P server that was illegally distributing copyrighted content. I was obliquely referring to this.
A: Ask the Scots...
=)
This is definately not legal, even in the US
True...for now. A recent
(Link here, but I imagine you're too lazy to click, so here's a copy:)
Slashdot should cache pages to prevent the Slashdot Effect!
Sure, it's a great idea, but it has a lot of implications. For example, commercial sites rely on their banner ads to generate revenue. If I cache one of their pages, this will mess with their statistics, and mess with their banner ads. In other words, this will piss them off.
Of course, most of the time, the commercial sites that actually have income from banner ads easily withstand the Slashdot Effect. So perhaps we could draw the line at sites that don't have ads. They are, after all, much more likely to buckle under the pressure of all those unexpected hits. But what happens if I cache the site, and they update themselves? Once again, I'm transmitting data that I shouldn't be, only this time my cache is out of date!
I could try asking permission, but do you want to wait 6 hours for a cool breaking story while we wait for permission to link someone?
So the quick answer is: "Sure, caching would be neat." It would make things a lot easier when servers go down, but it's a complicated issue that would need to be thought through in great detail before being implemented.