DDoS attacks deemed illegal in Sweden
Bots operators face jailtime
Posted in Enterprise Security, 20th February 2007 16:45 GMT
Free whitepaper – Solid State Drives and High-Speed Memory
Distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS), where targets are deluged with requests for information, will be made a criminal offence in Sweden from 1 June.
According to a draft amendment to existing hacking laws, perpetrators will face a maximum sentence of two years' imprisonment. There are currently no laws banning the attacks in Sweden.
Last year, Swedish hackers launched a DDoS attack against the websites of the Swedish government and Swedish police after police closed controversial BitTorrent site The Pirate Bay. Both sites were offline for a couple of hours. A group calling themselves World Wide Hackers claimed responsibility for the attacks in a phone call to Aftonbladet newspaper.
The new law will ban all attacks, regardless of whether they are carried out automatically (through botnets) or manually, according to Swedish news site The Local. Conspiracy to carry out an attack will also be made a criminal offence. Distributed denial-of-service attacks are already illegal in many European countries. ®
Free whitepaper – Ensuring service assurance in the new normal
The Register Guide to Extended Validation
The Evolving Security Landscape
The Impact of IT Security Attitudes
Risk and Resilience
Linux on the Desktop
