Teen Gets 2 Years In Jail For Hacks Against Xbox Live And Others

A UK teenager is going to jail for two years for creating a program that resulted in more than 1.7 million attacks on Xbox Live, Minecraft, and TeamSpeak, according to The Guardian.

Adam Mudd created the Titanium Stresser program used in the reported attacks when he was 16, according to the report (via Eurogamer). He sold the program to unnamed "cybercriminals," allegedly earning himself more than £386,000.

Mudd, who is now 20, apparently pleaded guilty to the charges, which included one count of committing unauthorized acts with intent to impair the operation of computers; one count of making, supply or offering to supply an article for use in an offense contrary to the Computer Misuse Act; and one count of concealing criminal property.

The presiding judge, Michael Topolski, said the sentence needed to have a "real element of deterrent," saying he wouldn't lessen the term, as Mudd's counsel, Ben Cooper, had asked for. According to the report, Cooper said Mudd was "sucked into the cyber world of online gaming and was 'lost in an alternate reality' after withdrawing from school because of bullying."

"I'm entirely satisfied that you knew full well and understood completely this was not a game for fun," Topolski, the judge, said to Mudd during proceedings. "It was a serious money-making business and your software was doing exactly what you created it to do."

According to The Guardian, "Mudd showed no emotion as he was sent to a young offender institution."

The report goes on: "The court heard that Mudd, who lived with his parents, had previously undiagnosed Asperger syndrome and was more interested in status in the online gaming community than the money."

According to the report, Mudd carried out 594 DDoS attacks against 181 IP addresses running from December 2013 through March 2015. The game RuneScape was targeted, facing 25,000 attacks, the report said. The game's publisher reportedly spent £6m trying to prevent DDoS attacks.

You can read the full report here at The Guardian.

Both Xbox Live and PlayStation Network suffered widespread and serious outages on Christmas Day 2014, due to DDoS attacks. Sony later said that PSN is attacked every day.