A British computer hacker made $460000 from DDOS software and he was only 16 years old
Adam Mudd (now 20 years old) appeared in court in this week after admitting several offenses under the computer misuse act. It was revealed during the court hearing that while attending a computer science course at West Herts College he created and sold the ‘Titanium Stresser’ malware to cyber criminals from all over the world. The Titanium Stresser software was then used to create DDOS (distributed denial of service) attacks on high profile sites such as Xbox live and Minescape and estimated to have been used over a million times by hackers.
One of the victims of the software used by cyber criminals was Runescape. It suffered 25000 individual attacks and had to spend $7.5 million to mitigate against it the court heard.
Although he did not take part in these high profile attacks he did take part in DDOS attacks against several schools and colleges including the one that he attended.
Mudd was arrested in 2015 at his home where he lived with his parents and initially refused to unlock his computer until his father intervened. Although he had made a large amount of money from his criminal enterprise he lived a modest lifestyle and it was heard that it was more about status than making money that drove him to his crimes.
The judge preciding over the case said that is was a complex one and he would not be rushed into determining a suitable sentence. Mudd will return to court at a later date for sentencing.