Cybersecurity 2018

1 Criminal Activity

1.1 Would any of the following activities constitute a criminal offence in your jurisdiction? If so, please provide details of the offence, the maximum penalties available, and any examples of prosecutions in your jurisdiction:

The "Criminal Code of the Republic of Albania" does not explicitly provide a literal denomination of the criminal offences listed in the following, but, nevertheless, the content of these offences can be found in various articles of the Criminal Code as stated below.

Hacking (i.e. unauthorised access)

Hacking constitutes a criminal offence in the Albanian jurisdiction. Article 192/b/1 of the "Criminal Code of the Republic of Albania" provides that unauthorised access or excess of authorisation to a computer system or part of it, through violation of security measures, is punishable by a fine or imprisonment of up to three years. According to the Final Report of the General Prosecutor on the state of criminality for the year 2016, four cases have been recorded by the Prosecution body, but no further details are given.

Denial-of-service attacks

Article 293/c/1 of the "Criminal Code of the Republic of Albania" provides that the creation of serious and unauthorised obstacles to harm the function of a computer system, through insertion, damage, deformation, change or deletion of data, is punishable with imprisonment from three to seven years. According to the Final Report of the General Prosecutor on the state of criminality for the year 2016, three cases have been recorded by the Prosecution body, but no details are given on the cases.

Phishing

Article 143/b of the "Criminal Code of the Republic of Albania" states that adding, modifying or deleting computer data or interfering in the functioning of a computer system, with the intention of ensuring for oneself or for third parties, through fraud, unfair economic benefits or causing a third party reduction of wealth, is punishable by imprisonment from six months to six years and punishable by a fine from 60,000 Leke to 600,000 Leke. According to the Final Report of the General Prosecutor on the state of criminality for the year 2016, 51 cases have been recorded by the Prosecution body, seven of which have ended with the sentencing of the accused, but no further details are given.

Infection of IT systems with malware (including ransomware, spyware, worms, trojans and viruses)

Article 293/b of the "Criminal Code of Albania" provides that damage...