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The Computer Misuse Act 1990 has been amended by the Police and Justice Act 2006.
Where amendments have been made, these are specifically highlighted in the text below.
The Computer Misuse Act is designed to meet the general threat of unauthorised access, often called hacking. There are three offences in the Act:
A person is guilty of an offence if:
They cause a computer to perform any function with intent to secure access to any programme or data held in any computer
AND
Access or intended access is unauthorised
AND
They know this is the case when the action is carried out
Unauthorised access to computer material is the lowest level of offence. It includes such practices as:
Finding or guessing someone's password
Using another's password to access a computer system
The offence occurs even if no changes to data are made, and no damage done. It is the act of accessing materials without authorisation that is illegal. As amended by the Police and Justice Act 2006 this now carries a penalty of up to two years’ imprisonment and/or a fine.
This expands on the first offence. It is the term 'intent to commit...further offences' that increases both the severity of the offence and the severity of the possible penalty, which is up to five years' imprisonment and/or a fine.
This offence includes such practices as:
Deleting files
Changing the desktop build
Introducing viruses
The key element of this offence is 'intent', in that it is aimed at deliberate acts. It extends to the access of one computer through which damage is perpetrated on another, remote computer.
The Police and Justice Act 2006 now specifically states that Distributed Denial of Service attacks (DDoS) should be considered within this Section (DDoS is when an attacker floods a particular website with messages, endlessly repeated. This ties up the system and denies access to legitimate users).
This offence now carries a penalty of up to ten years' imprisonment and/or a fine.
The new Section 3A deals with those who produce, for example, malicious scripts or software designed to enable modification of television set top boxes. Again ‘intent’ is key here – it is aimed at deliberate acts.
This offence carries a possible penalty of up to two years’ imprisonment and/or a fine.
