EritreaPenal Code of the State of Eritrea, Unauthorized Use of a Computer
Penal Code of the State of Eritrea (2015), arts. 374-375 (Unauthorized Use of a Computer)
A computer misuse rule binding public and private bodies.
- Obligation class
- Access restriction
- Audit expectation
- none
What it requires
- Do not obtain an unauthorized computer service, intercept a function of a computer system, or alter, destroy, or interfere with data in a computer system, without authorization.
- Reading a public, unauthenticated page without defeating any access control has not itself been held to violate this Article.
These lines are LexLint's reading of the law's text.
In the frameworks
- NIST AI RMF
- MAP 4.1Approaches for mapping AI technology and legal risks of its components – including the use of third-party data or software – are in place, followed, and documented, as are risks of infringement of a third party’s intellectual property or other rights.
- NIST AI 600-1
- GAI-RISK-09Information Security
- GAI-RISK-12Value Chain and Component Integration
- OWASP LLM Top 10
- LLM03:2026Excessive Agency
- OWASP Agentic Top 10
- ASI03Identity and Privilege Abuse
- MIT mitigations Draft
- FINOS AIGF
- AIR-PREV-018Agent Authority Least Privilege Framework
- AIR-PREV-023Agentic System Credential Protection Framework
- ETSI EN 304 223
- 5.1.2-6Access the AI system gets to other systems and data sources is minimal and risk assessed.
Our reading of where this law's duties sit in each framework. It never says that running a control meets the law. How we read a framework against the law
Identifiers refer to ETSI EN 304 223 V2.1.1 (2025-12), © ETSI 2025, all rights reserved. ETSI owns the standard; no ETSI text (titles or sentences) is reproduced here. The standard is free to download from ETSI.
If you get it wrong
Criminal exposureYes
Private right of actionNo
Criminal exposure note
Unauthorized use of a computer is a Class 2 petty offence, punishable with a definite term of imprisonment of 1 to 6 months, or a fine of 5,001 to 20,000 Nakfas, set in intervals of 1,000 Nakfas (art. 374). Aggravated unauthorized use of a computer, committed in relation to a public or financial institution, is a Class 8 serious offence, punishable with a definite term of imprisonment of 3 to 5 years, with no fine stated (art. 375).
Penalty structure
Fine range for the Class 2 petty offence under art. 374; the same subsection also allows imprisonment of 1 to 6 months instead of the fine. The aggravated offence under art. 375 (against a public or financial institution) carries imprisonment of 3 to 5 years with no fine option.
- Rule
- Fixed only
- As of
- Minimum
- 5,001
- Currency
- ERN
- Fixed cap
- 20,000
What it makes you log
Logging duty
Articles 374 and 375 define the offence of unauthorized use of a computer, and its aggravated form against public or financial institutions. They impose no duty to create, keep, produce or review a log or record, and they carry no territorial clause of their own.
- Kind
- None
- As of
What this law does
Article 374(1) makes it an offence for a person to intentionally obtain, directly or indirectly, any unauthorized computer service; intercept, by an electro-magnetic, acoustic, mechanical, or other device, any function of a computer system; alter or destroy data in a computer, render data meaningless, useless, or ineffective, or obstruct, interrupt, or interfere with the lawful use of data; or permit another person access to a computer password enabling such an offence, or otherwise deny or interfere with an entitled person's access to data.
Unauthorized use of a computer is a Class 2 petty offence, punishable with imprisonment of 1 to 6 months or a fine of 5,001 to 20,000 Nakfas, set in intervals of 1,000 Nakfas. Article 375 makes the same conduct against a public or financial institution a Class 8 serious offence, aggravated unauthorized use, punishable with imprisonment of 3 to 5 years, with no fine stated.
Because the offence's own heading and article 374(1)(a) tie the conduct to an unauthorized computer service, a scraper reading a public, unauthenticated page without defeating any access control falls outside a plain reading of the provision; the Council of Europe's Octopus Cybercrime Community country profile for Eritrea describes this Penal Code as the jurisdiction's substantive law on illegal access, illegal interception, and data interference, and does not identify any separate cybercrime statute.
Article 3 of the Penal Code brings the Code into force on the date of its publication in the Gazette of Eritrean Laws, and no Gazette publication day for it has been located.
When LexLint raises it
When your app profile says your app crawls the web or trains models.
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