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ARTICLE · 21 DECEMBER 2006

Hackers Hacked-off…

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The Police and Justice Act 2006, which received royal assent on 8 November, modifies the Computer Misuse Act 1990 making it an offence to launch a denial of service attack in the UK and increasing the penalties for offences committed under the CMA.

United KingdomIntellectual Property
Catherine Reed
Catherine Reed

This article was originally published in Bristows' monthly IT e-newsletter 'The Cookie Jar'.

The Police and Justice Act 2006, which received royal assent on 8 November, modifies the Computer Misuse Act 1990 ("CMA") making it an offence to launch a denial of service attack in the UK and increasing the penalties for offences committed under the CMA.

Concerns had been raised that ‘denial of service’ attacks (causing a server to crash by bombarding it with more e-mail messages or requests for information than it can handle) fell through a loophole in the CMA, a shortcoming widely attributed to the CMA having been drafted before the days of widespread Internet usage.

Section 3 of the original CMA made it an offence to cause "an unauthorised modification of the contents of any computer" with the requisite intent and knowledge. It was arguable that denial of service attacks fell outside this definition, as most websites expressly or impliedly invite visitors to interact with the site by

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