Republic of South Africa

THE ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATIONS AND TRANSACTIONS ACT of July 31 2002 (Act No. 25, 2002)

CHAPTER XIII

CYBER CRIME

Unauthorised access to, interception of or interference with data.
86. (1) Subject to the Interception and Monitoring Prohibition Act, 1992 (Act No. 127 of 1993), a person who intentionally accesses or intercepts any data without authority or permission to do so, is guilty of an offence.
(2) A person who intentionally and without authority to do so, interferes with data in a way which causes such data to be modified, destroyed or otherwise rendered ineffective, is guilty of an offence.
(3) A person who unlawfully produces, sells, offers to sell, procures for use, designs, adapts for use, distributes or possess any device, including a computer program or a component, which is designed primarily to overcome security measures for the protection of data, or performs any of those acts with regard to a password, access code or any other similar kind of data with the intent to unlawfully utilise such item to contravene this section, is guilty of an offence.
(4) A person who utilises any device or computer program mentioned in subsection (3) in order to unlawfully overcome security measures designed to protect such data or access thereto, is guilty of an offence.
(5) A person who commits any act described in this section with the intent to interfere with access to an information system so as to constitute a denial, including a partial denial, of service to legitimate users is guilty of an offence.

Penalties
88. (1) A person convicted of an offence referred to in sections 37(3), 40(2), 58(2), 80(5), 82(2) or 86(1), (2) or (3) is liable to a fine or imprisonment for a period not exceeding 12 months.
(2) A person convicted of an offence referred to in sections 86(4) or (5) or section 87 is liable to a fine or imprisonment for a period not exceeding five years.