UK teen in court over "e-mail bomb" charges
Tom Espiner writes in C|Net News:
A teenager accused of unleashing an "e-mail bomb" on his former employer will appear in court on Tuesday in what will be a test case for the Computer Misuse Act.
Police accuse the youth of sending 5 million e-mails to the company he used to work for. This amount of e-mail could cause an e-mail server to crash and is hence a form of denial-of-service (DoS) attack.
This case will prove to be a test of the effectiveness of the CMA, as nobody has yet been convicted under the act of launching a DoS attack. According to those familiar with the case, the teenager's defense will argue that launching a DoS attack is not illegal under the CMA.
The CMA does not specifically include a denial-of-service attack as a criminal offense, something some members of the U.K. parliament want changed. The act explicitly outlaws 'unauthorized access' and 'unauthorized modification' of computer material, but DoS attacks sit in a legal gray area.
posted by Fergie @ 11/01/2005 09:06:00 AM
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