When he was just 16 years old, Mudd created a malicious code called Titanium Stresser. After building the malware, he set up a business and started selling it to hackers. The success of the code allowed the teenager to make £386,000. Far more than his own monetary gain, the code allowed 1.7 million hacks to be carried out worldwide. The court found Adam Mudd guilty of carrying out 594 distributed denial of services attacks against 181 IP addresses. Mudd’s antics also covered the small-time of cybercrime as he breached his school network and crashed the system. Among the companies affected by the DDoS attacks were Sony, Microsoft, Minecraft, TeamSpeak, and RuneScape. In the case, Prosecutor Jonathan Polnay claimed the Titanium Stresser program was used by 112,000 different hackers. Together, they breached 666,000 IP addresses. Microsoft-owned Minecraft was one of the games attacked by the program.
Prestige
Among the worst affected was RuneScape, which was the subject of 25,000 attacks that cost the company £6 million to shore up security. Despite Mudd making hundreds of thousands of pounds, both defence and prosecution say that he was more motivated by status than he was money. Titanium Stresser gave Mudd online prestige amongst fellow hackers after he had been expelled from school: “This was an unhappy period for Mr. Mudd, during which he suffered greatly,” said defense attorney Ben Cooper. “This is someone seeking friendship and status within the gaming community.” Mudd will now spend two years in a young offender’s institution. He is reported to have showed no emotion as the sentence was passed.
