HomeWinBuzzer NewsMicrosoft, Sony, and Minecraft Cybercriminal Sentenced to Two Years in Prison

Microsoft, Sony, and Minecraft Cybercriminal Sentenced to Two Years in Prison

The creator of the Titanium Stresser DDoS program was found guilty of creating an attack that was used hundreds of thousands of times and will spend two years in a young offender’s institute.

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The perpetrator of an attack on , Sony, and several other companies, has been sentenced to two years in prison. The Guardian reports that teenage hacker Adam Mudd was found guilty of several counts of and hacking.

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, , 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.

Luke Jones
Luke Jones
Luke has been writing about all things tech for more than five years. He is following Microsoft closely to bring you the latest news about Windows, Office, Azure, Skype, HoloLens and all the rest of their products.

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