‘Awareness among IT users, needed to curb internet hacking’

H.D.H Senewiratne

It is impossible to prevent people misusing technology and trends are developing to shift the nature of crimes from traditional to Hi-tech, for which a computer or network may be used as a tool or a storage medium to commit crimes.

“It is said that internet hacking and tracking is on the increase in Sri Lanka, necessitating increased awareness among IT users. The Sri Lankan Penal Code had provisions to address this issue,” Colombo Law Society IT Committee Chairman Sunil D.B Abeyratne said.“If any person unlawfully enters without permission of the occupier’s data base, network committing an offence, from a same or different jurisdiction is known as hacking, which penalties could be imposed,”Abeyratne said.

He said if any person obtains information accessing another person’s computer network or data base to commit a further crime known as cracking. Therefore, the Computer Crime Act Sri Lanka deals with these crimes. But lack of awareness among the public, lawyers, judges and other specialists in the sector is impeding the arrest this grave issue, Abeyratne said.

Today we could see number of cross border issues involving computer hacking, cracking and modification occur. In Section 2 of the Act deals with computer hacking, cracking and modification. The High Court of Sri Lanka has jurisdiction to deal with them, he said.

Abeyratne also said that if a person received unknown/suspicious message for the computer he should not open the message, which would lead to hacking. Therefore Sections 3, 4 and 5 of the Computer Crime Act deals with offences.

According to Sri Lankan law punishments for computer hacking and cracking are stipulated in the legal system, where for computer hacking the punishment is Rs 100,000 or six months imprisonment or both while for computer tracking Rs 200,000 or six months imprisonment or both punishments.

Further, Director CID DIG Mahesh Perera said at a recent seminar that when this type of offence committed , a lot of expert evidence is needed to prove the crime. Therefore, lack of resources and awareness level make this issue more aggravated.

With all these developments international cooperation is very important to facilitate investigations on computer crimes and any country deal with computer crimes must have new methodologies to fulfil the requirement.