When Adam Mudd (goes by the online handle of themuddfamily) was 15, he developed a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack tool called Titanium Stresser. The tool was then used by him to conduct large-scale cyber attacks on the websites of Cambridge University, technology giant Sony Corporation and Microsoft.
Mudd who is from the United Kingdom carried out 1.7 million cyber attacks on websites and servers around the world costing victims millions of dollars in damages. He then decided to sell Titanium Stresser to other cyber criminals and made £386,000 (USD 494,736). All that while sitting in his bedroom at his parents’ house.
Now, Mudd, 20, he is facing the consequences of his crimes. The authorities claim that between December 2013 and March 2015, Mudd conducted 594 DDoS attacks by himself against 181 IP addresses affecting major cities worldwide.
Adam Mudd
Mudd, now aged 20, carried out 594 of the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks himself, against 181 IP addresses, between December 2013 and March 2015. Furthermore, Mudd has also admitted conducting security breaches against the West Herts College where he was a student of computer science.
Telegraph reported that according to Prosecutor Jonathan Polnay, “This was not a white hat, friendly test to see what was going on.” On one occasion in 2014, the college hacking affected 70 more schools and colleges, including Cambridge University and the universities of Essex and East Anglia as well as local councils. There were more than 112,000 registered users of Mudd’s program who hacked over 666,000 IP addresses. Of those, nearly 53,000 were in the UK.”
According to Polnay, Mudd also DDoSed gaming giants like RuneScape, Minecraft, Xbox Live and servers of TeamSpeak, a software for quality voice communication via the Internet famous among gamers. In RuneScape’s case alone the company suffered 25,000 attacks costing the administrators £6 million in defense and revenue loss of £184,000.
Mudd was arrested in March 2015 at his parents’ house using his computer and pleaded guilty to his crime and is waiting to be sentenced next week. It must be noted that Mudd also has Asperger’s Syndrome but the Judge Michael Topolski QC has clarified that the case was of “importance and seriousness” and not to be rushed to judgment.
Update:
In the latest development, Adam Mudd has been sentenced to 2 years in prison for his crime.
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