Can it get any crazier? "The cyberwar is on", says Matthijs van Nieuwkerk, presentor of ‘De Wereld Draait Door, a prime time and most popular television program from Dutch public broadcaster VARA. It seems like Van Nieuwkerk wants to contribute to the cyberattacks on Wikileaks himself.  Well, actually he lets Arnoud Vermeer, internet security expert, do the dirty job. After Vermeer first points out to Van Nieuwkerk how to perform a DoS attack step by step, he lets Van Nieuwkerk seduce him to perform a live attack on www.mastercard.com. 

Van Nieuwkerk: "Show me step by step how to fire on MasterCard”. And later on Vermeer says: "Any moment I want, I can press on fire and then we get war." To which Van Nieuwkerk says, "Do it". "That’s a criminal offence", says Vermeer. "Yes, but this won’t hurt much more, this is a journalistic demonstration of how it works. Press fire!". Then, Vermeer presses the button 'fire'.  

Yesterday in his weblog, Dutch IT lawyer Wouter Dammers (SOLV) pointed out in detail why under Dutch law performing a DDoS attack constitutes a criminal offence on several grounds:

"For instance, article 138b Penal Code criminalizes the intentional and unlawful obstruction of access to or use of a automated device (read: computer), by offering or sending it information. In addition, the Computer Crime Act has a number of other articles that are also applicable to DDoS attacks. For examples: Article 350a Penal Code, criminalizes the unlawful and intentional destruction of computer data. By absence of intent, but  when debt is provabe, it would fall under Article 350b Penal Code. Article 161sexies Penal Code sees the willful and unlawful destruction of a computer as a criminal offense. By absence of intent, but  when debt is provabe, this falls under Article 161septies Penal Code. And the intentional and unlawful entry of a computer ("computer intrusion") is punishable under Article 138a paragraph 1 Penal Code."

Vermeer lets Van Nieuwkerk push him into giving a live, on air performance of a criminal offense… not so smart! To make it even worse, Vermeer states that he has done it before: "Half a year ago, in a drunken night we shut down the University of Twente and Eindhoven". 

One wonders, does providing a tutorial to and executing a DDoS attack fall under the tasks of a journalist and a public broadcaster?

Source: De Wereld Draait Door (VARA)