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U.K. Outlaws Denial of Service Attacks
gnaremooz writes "A U.K. law has been passed that makes it an offense to launch denial-of-service attacks. The penalties for violating the new statues are stiff, with sentences increased from 5 to 10 years. The five year penalty was from the 1990 "Computer Misuse Act", which was enacted before the Internet became widespread. The idea of stiffer penalties for DoS attacks are probably something we can all get behind, but the language of the law is frustratingly vague." From the article: "Among the provisions of the Police and Justice Bill 2006, which gained Royal Assent on Wednesday, is a clause that makes it an offense to impair the operation of any computer system. Other clauses prohibit preventing or hindering access to a program or data held on a computer, or impairing the operation of any program or data held on a computer."
Only outlaws will be reading Slashdot?
That really is rather vague. My family are able to "impair the operation of any computer system" just by being left alone with it for 10 minutes.
quick, everyone pull the article up and refresh till the cows come home!
I like your Macs, but I don't like your Mac users. (with apologies to Gandhi)
5-10 years for violating statues!
I'll never be-cone a statue ever again.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4264683.stm
Don't you remember the eastern European crime gangs that threatened UK businesses with DoS attacks unless they paid?
And those that paid were then subsequently threatened by smaller gangs for smaller amounts of money to prevent smaller DoS attacks (down to $0.02 to prevent a DoS attack from an 8088 PC hooked up on a 300 baud modem).
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
>Are these people just incredibly arrogant or plain stupid?
Why does it have to be either-or?
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
No more unplugging the microwave.
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a good idea...."
RFC 1925