The Government have amended the UK legislation relating to cybercrime, the Computer Misuse Act 1990, to ensure that the Act continues to be relevant as technology changes.
In the Police & Justice Act 2006
We broadened the definition of the Section 3 offence to clarify that all means of interference with a computer system are criminalised—in particular ensuring that adequate provision is made to criminalise all forms of denial of service (DoS) attacks.
We increased the maximum penalty for the Section 1 offence of unauthorised access to computer material to two years to better reflect the seriousness of these offences as more and more sensitive systems and information have external connections and also to ensure that the offence is extraditable.
We added the Section 3A offence, which created a new offence of making, adapting or supplying articles for use in computer misuse offences to discourage the market in the production and distribution of hacking tools.
In the Serious Crime Act 2007 Part 2 we created a new general offence of encouraging and assisting crime. This offence covers both online and offline offending and replaced the offence of enabling unauthorised access to computer material created in the Police and Justice Act.
Both of these Acts also contained a number of minor and consequential amendments to other parts of the Computer Misuse Act 1990.
Additionally, changes were made to territorial extent and the relevance of external law sections of the Computer Misuse Act, through the Criminal Justice (Terrorism & Conspiracy) Act 1998.