Germany's top police official has called for tougher laws to fight cyber crime on the illegal internet - the Darknet - and other organised criminal structures, in an interview published on Saturday. Holger Muench, president of the Federal Criminal Police Office, told Die Welt newspaper that German law needed to be adjusted to account for the massive harm such criminal activities can do.
"Professional hackers can cause enormous damage. They represent a danger for security and the economy," Muench said. "That should be reflected in the sentences as well." Muench said current law made it difficult to go after operators of botnet networks that enable large-scale automated cyber attacks.
Muench's comments came after a German court recently gave a suspended sentence to a British hacker-for-hire who confessed to a cyber attack that knocked out the internet for around a million Deutsche Telekom customers. The regional court in Cologne handed the man, named only as Daniel K., a suspended sentence of a year and eight months for attempted commercial computer sabotage. The maximum sentence was up to 10 years, and prosecutors had asked for two years.
The Federal Criminal Police Office last year reported 83,000 cases of cyber crime that caused damage costing over 51 million euros.
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