Legal aspects of distributed denial of service attacks

Abstract

A Distributed Denial of Service Attack is a form of Cybercrime whereby a high number of requests are sent to a website or a server simultaneously. The high number of requests overloads the system until it shuts down and stops functioning correctly, thus rendering the website or service unavailable to its legitimate users. Throughout my thesis I shall further be examining the way in which the Council of Europe Cybercrime Convention tackles the Distributed Denial of Service Attacks and how the relevant articles were implemented in the Maltese, United Kingdom and the United States jurisdictions will be evaluated. In Chapter One I shall give an analysis of what constitutes a Distributed Denial of Service attack whist examining the motives instigating such attacks. A thorough step-by-step examination will be carried out in Chapter Two whilst taking into consideration the relevant laws which apply at each stage in all the three different jurisdictions. Chapter Three shall be based upon the common legal aspects which are essential under all the three mentioned jurisdictions. The final Chapter consists of an overview of the common problems encountered in the prosecutions and investigations in the commission of a Distributed Denial of Service attack accompanied by recommendations on how these problems can be mitigated.