Fergie's Tech Blog

UK: Appeals Court says Denial of Service is a Crime

Via OUT-LAW.com.

A judge made a mistake when he suggested that a teenager using a 'mail-bombing' program to attack his former employer's computer system was not breaching the Computer Misuse Act, according to the Court of Appeals.

David Lennon, who could not be named when he was cleared last November because he was then under 18, must now decide whether to plead guilty or stand trial in the district court. If convicted, he faces a maximum possible sentence of five years in prison and a fine.

After being dismissed from Domestic & General Group, in early 2004, Lennon allegedly used a program called Avalanche that, once activated, automatically sent continuous emails to the insurer's server until the program was manually stopped. The server received over 500,000 emails, the vast majority of which purported to come from a human resources manager within the company.

posted by Fergie @ 5/12/2006 06:47:00 AM