 | |
| ||||
November 01, 2005
|
|
|
The case will prove to be a test of the effectiveness of the U.K.'s Computer Misuse Act (CMA), as nobody has yet been convicted under the act of launching a DoS attack. The act explicitly outlaws "unauthorized access" and "unauthorized modification" of computer material, but DoS attacks sit in a legal gray area.
The youth is being tried at Wimbledon Magistrates Court in London under section 3 of the CMA, which concerns unauthorized data modification and tampering with systems.
The defense is expected to argue that the young man can't be convicted under the CMA because a flood of e-mail would not modify any data on the server.
"When you send an e-mail to an e-mail server, you are not modifying that server, because the purpose of the e-mail server is to sit around waiting to receive e-mails aimed at that domain," Peter Sommer, a senior research fellow in the London School of Economics' Information Systems department, told ZDNet UK.
 E-mail this story
 Printer-friendly version  Bookmark this page |
Custom Search
|
|
|
