Cybercrime and the Law: Primer on the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and Related Statutes

There is no single, straightforward definition of cybercrime under federal law. Rather, depending on the context, “cybercrime” may refer to all crimes involving computers, or only to crimes targeting computers, or to crimes unique to the computer context.

Regardless, federal prosecutors have a number of statutory tools to charge conduct that fits within these varying conceptualizations of cybercrime.