Fergie's Tech Blog

Security Fix: U.S. Senate Approves Bill to Fight Cyber-Crime

Brian Krebs writes on Security Fix:

The Senate on Wednesday passed legislation to modernize the nation's computer crime laws and give prosecutors more leeway in pursuing cyber crooks.

Under current federal cyber-crime laws prosecutors must show that the illegal activity caused at least $5,000 in damages before they can bring charges for unauthorized access to a computer. Under the bill approved today, that threshold would be eliminated.

Instead, the legislation would make it a felony to install spyware or keystroke-monitoring programs on 10 or more computers regardless of the amount of damage caused.

This change is important because most of today's cyber criminals break into thousands of computers at a time, but seldom inflict $5,000 worth of damages on any one individual. Moreover, while most commit their crimes by tunneling their connections through hacked computers, the crooks may never damage the PCs they are using as a proxy or try to steal personal and financial data from victims.

posted by Fergie @ 7/31/2008 03:18:00 PM