MPs want hackers behind bars

Computer hacking, an offence police once dismissed as a teenage prank, would carry a maximum two-year prison term as part of a revised cybercrime law proposed by MPs. In addition to stiffer hacking penalties, a revamped law would seek to criminalise denial-of-service attacks, a debilitating type of digital barrage capable of knocking out an online business for extended periods. Parliament's All Party Internet Group held a news conference on Wednesday to introduce the revisions as part of the first update to the Computer Misuse Act (CMA), Britain's only cybercrime law.

They have been gathering input from law enforcement agencies and online companies for the past two months on how best to bring the law, enacted in 1990 before the dawn of the World Wide Web, into the Internet era to address a growing area of criminality.