Denial of service attacks outlawed

[Egaladeist]

A UK law has been passed that makes it an offence to launch denial of service attacks, which experts had previously called "a legal grey area."

Among the provisions of the Police and Justice Bill 2006, which gained Royal Assent on Wednesday, is a clause that makes it an offence to impair the operation of any computer system. Other clauses prohibit preventing or hindering access to a program or data held on a computer, or impairing the operation of any program or data held on a computer.

The maximum penalty for such cybercrimes has also been increased from five to 10 years.

The law that attempted previously to deal with this area of computer crime was the Computer Misuse Act 1990 (CMA), which was drafted before widespread use of the internet began.

In a denial of service attack, a person attempts to make a computer system unavailable to users by overloading it with data. The CMA only prohibited unauthorised modification of a system, which opened up legal ambiguity for denial of service attacks using email.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/security/0,1000000189,39284670,00.htm
Denial of service attacks outlawed - ZDNet UK
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[EarnestKlein]

For protection from ddos attacks You can install a iptables as well as use LiteSpeed Http Server instead of simple webserver. For the best protection from ddos attacks, go to GigabitDC or Prolexic. They are very good at protection from ddos attacks.