ItalyCodice Penale Art. 615-quater, Illicit Possession or Distribution of Access Devices
Codice Penale, art. 615-quater, as amended by Legge 28 giugno 2024, n. 90
In force since .
A computer misuse rule binding public and private bodies.
- Audit expectation
- none
What it requires
- Do not obtain, hold, produce, reproduce, distribute, or supply codes, passwords, devices, or other means suited to accessing a computer or telematic system protected by security measures, or instructions enabling that access, without authorization.
These lines are LexLint's reading of the law's text.
If you get it wrong
Criminal exposureYes
Private right of actionNo
Criminal exposure note
Imprisonment up to two years plus a fine up to ten million lire (about EUR 5,164) for the base offense (comma 1); imprisonment from two to six years where an art. 615-ter comma-2(1) aggravating circumstance is present (comma 2); imprisonment from three to eight years where the target system is one described in art. 615-ter comma 3 (comma 3), each of the higher tiers carrying no separately stated fine.
Penalty structure
Base-tier fine only (comma 1); the same comma also carries imprisonment up to two years. The two higher tiers (commi 2-3) carry imprisonment only, with no separate fine stated in the text. The text states the fine as ten million lire, about EUR 5,164 at the fixed conversion rate of 1,936.27 lire to the euro.
- Rule
- Fixed only
- As of
- Currency
- EUR
- Fixed cap
- 5,164
Who enforces it
Settledness
- As of
- Open questions
- Does holding general-purpose scraping software or a session cookie make it a 'mezzo idoneo all'accesso' (means suitable for access) to a protected system within the meaning of Article 615-quater?
- Does 'abusivamente' (abusively) in Article 615-quater require that the holder acted without the right to enter the system, so that tools used only to read public pages fall outside it?
What it makes you log
Logging duty
Article 615-quater defines the offence of obtaining, holding or distributing devices, codes and other means of access to protected systems. It imposes no duty to create, keep, produce or review a log or record.
- Kind
- None
- As of
What this law does
Whoever, to procure an advantage for themselves or another or to cause harm to another, abusively obtains, holds, produces, reproduces, distributes, imports, communicates, delivers, otherwise makes available to others, or installs apparatus, instruments, parts of apparatus or instruments, codes, passwords or other means suited to accessing a computer or telematic system protected by security measures, or otherwise supplies indications or instructions suited to that purpose, is punished with imprisonment up to two years and a fine up to ten million lire, about EUR 5,164 (comma 1).
The penalty rises to imprisonment from two to six years where one of the aggravating circumstances of art. 615-ter, comma 2, number 1) is present (comma 2), and to imprisonment from three to eight years where the conduct concerns the systems described in art. 615-ter, comma 3 (comma 3). Legge 90/2024 amended commi 1 and 2 and inserted the new comma 3, effective .
When LexLint raises it
When your app profile says your app crawls the web.
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