recent CAO DoS attack..should it concern us? is our government taking this intrusion seriously?
Does ireland need to bring in new legislation to deal with denial of service attacks? This article in the Sunday Business Post does a good job of illustrating the shortcoming of our government in providing legislation and any deterrence to fraudsters!
Currently, Irish law does not contain a specific criminal offence to deal with denial-of-service attacks, which means that the person or group behind the CAO attack, if they are found, might escape prosecution. In other jurisdictions, such as England, these attacks have been addressed by new legislation.
Here, however, the relevant law dates back to 1991, was drafted before internet use was common and doesn’t specifically deal with this situation. As far back as 2001, an international treaty was agreed - the Cybercrime Convention - which specifically deals with denial of service attacks.
In March 2002, the then taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, promised that the convention would be transposed into Irish law. Almost a decade later, however, there is still no sign of any legislation from the Department of Justice, hardly surprising!

