UK Asks High Court To Review Whether Denial Of Service Attacks Are Legal

from the why-not-just-change-the-law? dept

Back in November we wrote about a court finding saying that denial of service attacks in the UK do not violate that country's Computer Misuse Act because a DoS attack doesn't involve "unauthorized access." We figured that this would make politicians leap into action and change the law, but that doesn't seem to be happening just yet. Instead, the Crown Prosecution Service is looking to appeal the judge's interpretation of the law, and ask the High Court to simply say that the CMA does cover denial of service attacks, even if it doesn't actually appear to from the text of the law.
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  1. identicon
    Ben McNelly, 5 Jan 2006 @ 10:51am

    No Subject Given

    Just a thought... So if Tech dirt or /.'ers pound some poor site with interesting breaking news/info, thats not realy an "attack" on thier server... it seems its a good thing to have sooo many hits it slows your server to a halt. Although if one had a big enough audiuance they could probably use it as an attack.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Rikko, 5 Jan 2006 @ 11:22am

    Re: No Subject Given

    Except I think by definition a DOS attack comes from a single (or a few) sources - a /. bomb isn't an attack in that it's totally distributed and not malicious. A ping flood from a couple of university campuses, by comparison, most definitely is.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    PB, 5 Jan 2006 @ 11:30am

    DDOS the High Court!

    Perhaps a well-placed DDOS launched against the High Court for a few days might convince them it's a problem, hmmm?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    Keir, 5 Jan 2006 @ 11:44am

    Other laws?

    Seems like DOS attacks, like most other supposed computer crimes could be handled by other existing laws, without the internet being given any special treatment.

    I don't know much about law, but wouldn't there be something more generic in place that makes it illegal to intentionally cause financial loss?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 5 Jan 2006 @ 5:05pm

    Re: Other laws?

    Do you happen to work for the recording industry?

    Should I not be allowed to open a business next to yours, provide better service, and steal all your customers? It is intentional, and it would certainly cause you to have a financial loss.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 8 Feb 2006 @ 1:55pm

    Re: Other laws?

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