Lei do Cibercrime Article 6, Illegal Access to a Computer System
Lei n.º 109/2009, de 15 de setembro (Lei do Cibercrime), art. 6.º
A citation is an address, not a summary. The first part names the law; what follows narrows it to the exact section, article or paragraph.
In force since 15 October 2009.
A computer misuse rule binding public and private bodies.
As of 6 September 2026.
What it requires
- Do not access a computer system located in Portugal without legal permission or authorization from its owner or another rights holder, including by circumventing a security control.
If you get it wrong
Criminal exposureYes
Criminal exposure note
Illegal access (art. 6.º) carries imprisonment up to one year or a fine up to 120 day-fines at the base tier (n.1), rising to imprisonment up to three years or a fine where access was achieved by breaching a security control (n.3), and to imprisonment from one to five years where the access revealed a trade or industrial secret or confidential data protected by law, or produced a considerably high financial benefit (n.4).
What this law does
Drafted with AI from the cited sources under the direction of UnGovr staff. UnGovr holds editorial responsibility for this page.
Whoever, without legal permission or authorization from the system's owner or another rights holder, accesses a computer system in any way is punished with imprisonment up to one year or a fine up to 120 day-fines.
The penalty rises to imprisonment up to three years or a fine where the access was achieved by breaching a security control, and to imprisonment from one to five years where the access revealed a trade or industrial secret or confidential data protected by law, or produced a considerably high financial benefit.
Producing, selling, distributing, or introducing into a computer system a device, program, executable instruction set, code, or other computer data intended to carry out that unauthorized access is punished under the same penalty.
When LexLint raises it
crawls_web
Read the law
Diário da República Eletrónico, dre.pt, official ELI text of Lei n.º 109/2009