UK: Teen escapes email bombing charge
John Leyden writes in The Register:
A British teenager who allegedly flooded his former employers' email system with five million emails has escaped trial after a judge ruled that he had no case to answer.
The ruling at Wimbledon Magistrates Court raises fresh doubts about the effectiveness of the Computer Misuse Act [CMA] in dealing with denial of service attacks by hackers.
District Judge Kenneth Grant ruled that the unnamed teenager's alleged actions did not fall foul of the Computer Misuse Act even though the email flood the firm suffered caused its email servers to crash.
The Computer Misuse Act - which dates back to 1990, before the widespread use of the net - outlaws the "unauthorised access" or "unauthorised modification" of computer systems. The unnamed teenager was charged under Section Three of the Act which covers the more serious offence of unauthorised modification of a computer system.
posted by Fergie @ 11/03/2005 06:36:00 AM
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