Tech Shout!

A teenage involved in crashing the email server of his former boss with loads of junk mail messages, is to face retrial.

David Lennon, 18, supposedly used a bulk mailing package called Avalanche to flood the email servers of his former employers Domestic and General Group with around five million emails in early 2004, shortly after his firing by the firm.

Lennon was charged with unauthorised data modification (section three) offences under the UK’s Computer Misuse Act 1990 (CMA), but the case against him was rejected when it went to trial last November after a judge ruled that since D&G’s email servers were set up to receive email, even the act of bombarding them with numerous junk emails did not amount to an offence.

But on Thursday, judges at the Royal Courts of Justice in London sent the case back to the Magistrates Court, saying Grant “was not right to state there was no case to answer,” reported ZDNet. This was followed by an appeal by the Crown Prosecution Service.

District Judge Kenneth Grant ruled that though D&G had established email servers to receive email, consent did not extend to email deliberately sent to disrupt their operation rather than for the purposes of genuine communication.

The lawsuit, which emphasizes on the failings in the riping CMA, especially related to laws on denial of service attacks, has been sent back to the Magistrates’ Court for retrial. If found guilty, Lennon will face a sentence of up to five years imprisonment along with a fine.

Backbench MPs with an interest in technology have campaigned for UK hacker law to be updated for some time. After a number of failed private members bills, the cause has been adopted by government. The new Police and Justice Bill includes provisions to specifically outlaw denial of service attacks as well as establishing increased penalties for hacking offences. The bill could become law by autumn.