The legal structure of the crime of hacking government websites in light of the provisions of Federal Decree-Law No. (34) of 2021 - a comparative analytical study.

And Dr. Halima Khalid Al-Madfaa, Fatma Salem Abdullah Mohammed

doi:10.21608/mjle.2025.455683

The legal structure of the crime of hacking government websites in light of the provisions of Federal Decree-Law No. (34) of 2021 - a comparative analytical study.

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Fatma Salem Abdullah Mohammed and Dr. Halima Khalid Al-Madfaa

College of Law - University of Sharjah

10.21608/mjle.2025.455683

Abstract

The study dealt with the position of the legal structure of the crime of hacking government websites, due to the seriousness of this crime on government information systems, where the study analyzed the nature of penetration, its types, and showed the elements of the crime of hacking, and the original and complementary penalties stipulated by the UAE legislator in Federal Decree-Law No. (34) of 2021 regarding rumors and cybercrime. As there is a problem of overlap between the acts that make up the penetration, which constitute the criminal behavior in the material element of the crime, and some other acts close to penetration, such as disruption and interception. The importance of the study is that it sheds light on the nature of government websites and distinguishes them from other sites with research into the elements and punishment of crime in light of the provisions of Federal Decree-Law No. (34) of 2021 regarding rumors and cybercrime, and a comparison with the position of the Egyptian legislator in Law No. (175) of 2018 on information technology crimes, and the study shows the theoretical framework of the crime in terms of criminalization and punishment. It also shows the scientific framework of the crime in terms of the privacy of its pillars and the privacy of the penalties allocated by the legislator to it, and the study is considered one of the first studies that specialize in one type of crime on government websites in light of Federal Decree-Law No. (34) of 2021, as it will provide many recommendations that contribute to filling the legal gaps in the law, if any. The study reached a conclusion that: the UAE legislator adopted the principle of tightening the penalty for the crime of penetrating the information systems of government institutions in the event that it resulted in any of the previous results, and here it can be said that the provisions for the crime of penetrating the information systems of government institutions tend to be tightened according to the criminal result that results from the act of penetration itself. Among the recommendations of the study: The UAE legislator should put the crime of information hacking alone as a crime independent of the rest of the crimes, because what is stated in the law confuses penetration and illegal survival, and the researcher also proposes a text for this article as follows: "Penetration is the attack during which access to the information system is carried out and causes the following results: "destruction", "destruction", "sabotage", "erasure of programs and data", "distortion", "erasure of programs and data", "stop", "deletion" or any other behavior that makes data or Information or software and information documents are not usable in whole or in part. "

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