
Youth guilty of breaking CMA after all...
By Colin Barker
Published: 24 August 2006 11:05 GMT
A UK teenager pleaded guilty on Wednesday to breaking the Computer Misuse Act (CMA) by crashing the email server of his former employer.
David Lennon, 18, was sentenced to a two-month curfew by a judge sitting at Wimbledon Magistrates' Court.
Lennon had originally been cleared of the charges in November 2005, after another judge ruled it wasn't an offence to overwhelm an email server with millions of messages. This ruling was later challenged by the Crown Prosecution Service, and in May 2006 the case was sent back to the magistrates' court.
On Wednesday morning, Judge Dixon ruled Lennon should be subject to a curfew, which means he must stay at home between the hours of 00:30 and 07:00 on weekdays, and 00:30 and 10:00 on weekends. If he breaks this curfew, he risks a more serious sentence.
The curfew has been timed so as not to interfere with Lennon's work at a local cinema. Judge Dixon said it is "a happy coincidence" it will end the day before Lennon starts college in September.
The prosecution dropped their demand that Lennon should pay costs amounting to £29,000, which arose from his attack on Domestic and General Group, in which five million emails crashed its servers.
The defence argued Lennon should receive a conditional discharge, given the confusion over whether the CMA outlawed the sending of masses of emails - known as an email bomb. Judge Dixon, though, argued this was inappropriate.
He told the court: "Even given his age at the time, this was a grave offence and caused serious damage, so I need to impose something to make him think again."
The CMA, which was introduced in 1990, explicitly outlaws the "unauthorised access" and "unauthorised modification" of computer material. Section 3, under which he was charged, concerns unauthorised data modification and tampering with systems.
Lennon's original case was heard by District Judge Kenneth Grant, who ruled that an email bomb did not violate the CMA because email servers were set up to receive emails. As such, each individual email could be ruled to make an "authorised modification" to the server.
The CMA is now seen as insufficient to combat the rise of cyber crimes such as denial of service attacks. A series of amendments are being introduced by the government to update it.
Colin Barker and Graeme Wearden write for ZDNet UK
Teenager in court over "email bomb" DoS attack
Youth escapes denial of service charge
CPS pushing for teen DoS trial to return to court
Cyber criminals threatened with 10 years in prison
Security professionals back tougher laws for hackers
Can UK law stop criminal hackers?
IT pros criminalised by CMA update?
There are templates available to work from which require modification for each opportunity. Use existing “hello” templates and ...
Design, Code & Deploy Emails. Emails. WEB DESIGNER / WEB DEVELOPER / CONTENT MANAGEMENT / WEBSITE DESIGNER / E-COMMERCE WEB DESIGNER / RETAIL SITE / ...
Creation and delivery of email Newsletters to site subscribers and bespoke emails briefed by the Marketing and Sponsorship departments. Working with ...
Agenda Setters 2009
Welcome to the ninth annual Agenda Setters poll – silicon.com's list of the top 50 most influential individuals in the technology and IT industries, from techies and CIOs to entrepreneurs and business leaders. Find out more in our latest special report.
Dell PowerVault DL2100 Powered by CommVault - Spec Sheet
Data Protection Strategies: Deduplication for More Efficient Backups
True Convergence Demands a Communication Service Provider that Embraces a Customer-Centric...
Learn how Performance Metrics for Telcomm Expense Management Drive new ROIs and SLAs
Stories from the web...
Copyright © 2008 CBS Interactive Limited. All rights reserved. Top of page
Mark Crichard Doing business with citizen developers: Beware the legal pitfalls Legal Eye: Make sure your business is protected from potential hazards
Tim Ferguson How CIOs can achieve post-recession success Q&A: McKinsey & Company on living in the 'new normal' business world