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This article was first published 11 years ago

Cyber criminals face longer prison terms, tougher penalties

July 09, 2013 08:38 IST

Image: A magnifying glass is held in front of a computer screen in this picture illustration taken in Berlin, Germany.
Photographs: Pawel Kopczynski/Reuters

EU lawmakers have agreed to toughen criminal penalties across the European Union for cyber attacks, especially those that include harming critical national infrastructure and hijacking computers to steal sensitive data.

The 28 EU member states currently have a patchwork of varying tariffs for cyber crime.

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Cyber criminals face longer prison terms, tougher penalties

Image: US Department of Homeland Security analysts work at the National Cybersecurity & Communications Integration Center located just outside Washington in Arlington, Virginia.
Photographs: Hyungwon Kang/Reuters

The decision mandates national maximum sentences of at least two years in prison for attempting to illegally access information systems. The maximum penalty for attacks against infrastructure such as power plants, transport, or government networks will be set at five years or more, higher than the current tariff in most member states.

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Cyber criminals face longer prison terms, tougher penalties

Image: A researcher of Hauri, an IT security software company investigating computer viruses, works at a lab of the company in Seoul, South Korea.
Photographs: Lee Jae-Won/Reuters

The decision also increases the penalties for illegally intercepting communications, or producing and selling tools to do this. Cyber criminals often infect computers to form armies of zombie PCs known as "botnets" by sending spam emails containing malicious links and attachments, and by infecting legitimate websites with computer viruses.

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Cyber criminals face longer prison terms, tougher penalties

Image: An analyst looks at code in the malware lab of a cyber security defense lab at the Idaho National Laboratory in Idaho Falls, Idaho.
Photographs: Jim Urquhart/Reuters

Some botnet creators rent or sell infected machines on underground markets to other cyber criminals looking to engage in a wide variety of activities including credit card theft and attacks on government websites.

In June, Microsoft helped to break up one of the world's largest cyber crime botnets, believed to have stolen more than $500 million from bank accounts.

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Cyber criminals face longer prison terms, tougher penalties

Image: Investigators with the US Federal Trade Commission look at computer monitors in the FTC Internet lab where cyber crime investigations take place in Washington, DC.
Photographs: Molly Riley/Reuters

Under the new EU rules, companies that benefit from botnets or hire hackers to steal secrets will be liable for any offences committed on their behalf. The European Parliament in Strasbourg voted 541 to 91 with nine abstentions on the proposal by the European Commission, the EU executive. However, Denmark has chosen to opt out of the rules, wanting to keep its own system in place.

EU governments now have two years to translate the decision into national law.

Source: REUTERS
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