16yo Hacker Hit Several Major Sofware Companies Made A Boat Load Of Cash Creating A Viruses
A teenage computer hacker who sold a virus which was used in 1.7 million hacking attacks and pocketed almost £400,000 is facing jail.
A 20-year-old Adam Mudd helped fellow hackers to attack and crash websites and computer servers by selling access to his sophisticated Titanium Stresser programme.
He first road-tested the programme on the website of West Herts College, where he himself was studying computer science, causing “incalculable” harm.
He developed the distributed denial of service, or DDoS, software from his bedroom, and started selling it to criminals when he was at school aged 16.
Mudd raked in nearly £400,000 by the time he was 18 by selling the programme to cyber criminals between September 2013 and March 2015.
He received a total of £240,153.66 and 249.81 bitcoins – worth an overall £386,079.
Mr Polnay showed the court a map of the world showing attacks in “almost every major city”, adding: “Where there are computers, there have been attacks.”
He said it would be “impossible” to assess the financial damage done by Mudd’s systems, but said one of Mudd’s four attacks on West Herts College in 2014 “was so large it is likely to have affected a further 70 schools and higher education establishments, including the Universities of Cambridge, Essex and East Anglia as well as local and district councils.”
Mudd opened his computer for officers when he was arrested in March 2015, admitting he had made TitaniumStresser but claiming “he had not been involved in any criminality”.
However he pleaded guilty to doing unauthorised acts with intent to impair the operation of a computer, a charge of making, supplying or offering to supply the TitaniumStresser programme, and concealing criminal property in October last year.
Judge Michael Topolski QC said the teenager, who has been assessed for autism, will not be sentenced until a later date.
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