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ARTICLE · 04 OCTOBER 2002

E-Commerce News - Cybercrime

Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer LLP
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United KingdomMedia, Telecoms, IT, Entertainment
Denial of service attacks have been featured in the media on numerous occasion in recent years. In its simplest form it involves bombarding a website with nonsensical emails until the data buffer for the website is exceeded. The website is then prevented from receiving further emails. This is clearly disastrous for any business that relies on email to receive orders from users (e.g. an online bookshop). Unfortunately the existing Computer Misuse Act 1990 was passed before the widespread use of the internet and so does not specifically prohibit such malicious attacks. Criminal offences under the existing Act are based on the criteria of unauthorised access or unauthorised data modification. Denial of service attacks aimed at publicly available websites do not do not neatly fit within those criteria.

The Computer Misuse (Amendment) Bill, currently before Parliament, seeks to

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