Legal Definitions - Federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act

The Federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (FCFAA) is a law that holds individuals or organizations liable for gaining unauthorized access to a computer and causing damage to it. The term "damage" is defined by the law to include harm to the computer's data, programs, systems, and information either by compromising integrity or by impairing availability.

Here are some examples of actions that could be considered a violation of the FCFAA:

• A hacker gains unauthorized access to a company's computer system and deletes important files, causing the company to lose valuable data.
• An employee of a government agency uses their access to the agency's computer system to view confidential information that they are not authorized to see.
• A person uses malware to infect a computer system and cause it to crash, rendering it unusable.

These examples illustrate how the FCFAA can be used to hold individuals or organizations accountable for damaging computer systems through unauthorized access or malicious actions. The law is designed to protect computer systems and the data they contain from unauthorized access and damage, and to deter individuals from engaging in these types of activities.