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20 year-old Adam Mudd has been sentenced to two years in jail for creating a hacking program that was responsible for downing Sony and Microsoft’s networks.
The Guardian reports that Mudd, who was 16 at the time, created a program called Titanium Stresser that was designed to shut down services via Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. The program was then sold online, making Mudd in the region of 386k in the process.
Its victims included Xbox Live, PSN, Minecraft and RuneScape, the latter of which was targeted around 25k times, costing Jagex in the region of 6m in defence costs and 184k in lost revenue.
Mudd carried out 594 DDoS attacks against 181 IP addresses between December 2013 and March 2015. This included at attack in 2014 on West Herts College, which also affected 70 other schools and colleges. His justification for this was that he had reported being mugged but no action had allegedly been taken.
In total there were over 112k registered users of Titanium Stresser who between them attacked around 666k IP addresses, 53k of which were in the UK. Users were offered discounts for bulk purchases and for referring friends.
Judge Michael Topolski QC refused to suspend the jail term, stating: I’m entirely satisfied that you knew full well and understood completely this was not a game for fun. It was a serious money-making business and your software was doing exactly what you created it to do.”
Mudd himself suffers from previously undiagnosed Asperger syndrome, which is a form of autism. He was also forced to withdraw from his school after being bullied. He is bright and high-functioning” and now understands that his actions were wrong, but his condition prevented him from having the empathy required to fully comprehend the suffering he was causing.
Topolski described his home life as perfectly respectable” and described his family as caring”.
Mudd has already been offline for two years. Defending barrister Ben Cooper added: This was an unhappy period for Mr Mudd, during which he suffered greatly. This is someone seeking friendship and status within the gaming community.”
