UTRECHT, THE NETHERLANDS, 1995 MAR 6 (NB) -- A Dutch student has
become the first person to be convicted of computer hacking in the
Netherlands. Ronald Oosteveen, a 22 year old Utrecht computer science
student, was handed down a six month suspended sentence by
magistrates last week, and was fined around $3,200

Oosteveen was accused of breaking into university, corporate and
government computers, following his arrested in March, 1993, just
three weeks after new Dutch anti-hacking legislation came into force.

Oosteveen was caught in the act of trying to hack into the computer
lines of a technical university in Delft near The Hague. He is also
thought to have been responsible for previous hacking attacks which
occurred before the new legislation came into force.

In court, prosecutors said that he was challenged by university staff
monitoring the computers, and police traced Oosteveen back to his
home. There, police found computer disks with evidence that he had
gained unauthorized access into the computer systems of several
companies and government offices in the Netherlands, Norway, and
Iceland.

Handing down its verdict, the court said computers were vital to a
modern society and it was "essential that information networks
not be violated."