14 DAY TRIAL // Adam Mudd, 19, of Toms Lane, Kings Langley, a town northwest of London, pleaded guilty two weeks ago to running the Titanium Stresser, a DDoS-for-hire service.
Mudd admitted to two counts of computer misuse, which stem from creating the service, using it himself, and then renting it to other criminals online through the titaniumstresser.net website.
Mudd built Titanium Stresser when he was 15
Investigators say that, when he was 15, the teenager built the Titanium Stresser service, which shortly became one of the most popular DDoS booters on the market.
According to Brian Krebs, the infamous Lizard Squad gang had used Titanium Stresser's source code as a base to build their Lizard Stresser service.
Mudd, who was arrested in 2015 at his home, made a fatal mistake. Investigators say that the teenager kept logs of all attacks launched through the service.
Titanium Stresser used to launch over 1.7 million DDoS attacks
This slip-up allowed UK police to determine that Mudd had used his own service to launch 594 DDOS attacks against 181 IP addresses, between December 2013, when the service came online, and March 2015, when police arrested Mudd and seized his computers.
Among the institutions he targeted, officials list his own college, where he was studying computer science.
Furthermore, because of the detailed logs, investigators were also able to determine that other crooks had used his service to launch a whopping 1.7 million DDoS attacks on targets all over the world.
Teenager made over $385,000 from his service
The Eastern Region Special Operations Unit (ERSOU), through Berdforshire Police, said that Mudd made over $385,000 from renting his DDoS tool to other crooks.
The judge in Mudd's case scheduled the sentencing hearing for December 2016.
In April 2016, another UK teen who created and sold several DDoS booters (Dejabooter, Vexstresser, netspoof and Refinedstresser) avoided going to prison. The judge sentenced the teenager to two years youth detention suspended for 18 months.
