What happens when you create a program that allows you to make 1.7 million attacks on Xbox Live, Minecraft, and TeamSpeak? A young man from the United Kingdom found out the hard way and is going to spend up to 2 years in jail for it.
The teenager in question is Adam Mudd. He created Titanium Stresser when he was just sixteen. After creating the program that performed millions of attacks, he sold his creation to random cyber criminals. That earned him over £386,000 ($400,000).
Mudd is twenty now and has pleaded guilty to the charges against him. Those charges include one count of committing unauthorized acts with intent to impair the operation of computers; one count of making, supplying, or offering to supply an article for use in an offense contrary to the Computer Misuse Act; and one count of concealing criminal property.
The judge presiding over the case even added that he wouldn’t lessen Mudd’s sentence even though Mudd’s lawyer requested it.
Ben Cooper, Mudd’s counsel, argued that his client was “sucked” into the world of cyber crime and that his actions were a result of the bullying he received. Cooper even went as far to say that Mudd was “lost in an alternate reality.”
Yet the judge wasn’t believing any of that. Judge Topolski told Mudd that he was “entirely satisfied that you knew full well and understood completely this was not a game for fun.” The judge even went on to say that Mudd was aware of the amount of money his software would make him and preceded to use it for such purposes.
Mudd performed over 594 DDoS attacks against more than 181 IP addresses throughout the months of December 2013 and March 2015. One of the games that were targeted by Mudd’s program was RuneScape which received over 25,000 attacks. The publisher of the game says it spent over £6 million ($7 million) to prevent the attacks.
Some sources say that during the hearing Mudd “showed no emotion” as they sent him off to an institution for young offenders.
