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DDoS-for-hire service owner sentenced to jail for 2 years

K

Killthee

helped a brotha out on multiple separate occasions!
Teenage hacker jailed for masterminding attacks on Sony and Microsoft

A man has been jailed for two years for setting up a computer hacking business that caused chaos worldwide.

Adam Mudd was 16 when he created the Titanium Stresser program, which carried out more than 1.7m attacks on websites including Minecraft, Xbox Live and Microsoft and TeamSpeak, a chat tool for gamers.

He earned the equivalent of more than £386,000 in US dollars and bitcoins from selling the program to cybercriminals.
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Mudd pleaded guilty and was sentenced at the Old Bailey. The judge, Michael Topolski QC, noted that Mudd came from a “perfectly respectable and caring family”. He said the effect of Mudd’s crimes had wreaked havoc “from Greenland to New Zealand, from Russia to Chile”.

Topolski said the sentence must have a “real element of deterrent” and refused to suspend the jail term. “I’m entirely satisfied that you knew full well and understood completely this was not a game for fun,” he told Mudd. “It was a serious money-making business and your software was doing exactly what you created it to do.”
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Polnay said there were more than 112,000 registered users of Mudd’s program who hacked about 666,000 IP addresses. Of those, nearly 53,000 were in the UK.

Among the targets was the fantasy game RuneScape, which had 25,000 attacks. Its owner company spent £6m trying to defend itself against DDoS attacks, with a revenue loss of £184,000.
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While not an official member of Lizard Squad, they apparently used his code to launch their DDoS attacks.

In any case, I’m not terribly interested in turning this post into a commercial for the Lizard kids; rather, it’s a brain dump of related information I’ve gathered from various sources in the past 24 hours about the individuals and infrastructure that support the site.

In a show of just how little this group knows about actual hacking and coding, the source code for the service appears to have been lifted in its entirety from titaniumstresser, another, more established DDoS-for-hire booter service. In fact, these Lizard geniuses are so inexperienced at coding that they inadvertently exposed information about all of their 1,700+ registered users (more on this in a moment).

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/12/lizard-kids-a-long-trail-of-fail/comment-page-1/
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S

Snaku

Banned
tumblr_mkfpzhImiO1rxofjho5_250.gif
 
B

Biggad

Neo Member
How is it possible to create something technical of that magnitude at 16? How does that happen, serious question.
 
S

Sniffynose

Member
I mean I would go to jail for 2 years if I could make 1 million Canadian from it, that's a sweet deal. Crime pays apparently.
 
G

Goldenroad

Member
Gxgear said:
Well, it's inevitable given where he's going.
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I made joke once about a murderer getting prison raped and got banned for it. Might wanna consider that.

Anyway, this seems pretty lenient to me. 2 years probably means he's out in 6 months on "good behavior". He should have to spend every day of the rest of his life paying back the time that people lost on those services to the individuals effected.
 
G

Gentleman Jack

Member
2 years seems lenient for causing tens of millions of dollars in damage to organizations ranging from schools to ISPs. On the other hand, the States would probably take it too far in the other direction. OH WELL.
 
D

Dipper145

Member
Initially felt weird about it because he was 16 at the time, then I realized that he's 20 now.

But the article makes it seem like he's being charged for stuff he did while studying in college in 2013 when he was 16 so I'm just more confused.

It looks like he was arrested in 2015, which would have made him 18 at the time. I suppose they specifically let him keep doing what he was doing until he was legally an adult so they could get a prison sentence?

Hopefully when he gets out he lands on the the side of working for cyber-security.
 
K

Kayant

Member
Teenage hacker
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TheGuardian hasn't got the memo yet it seems. Also that's a shitton of money good they got rekted.
Among the targets was the fantasy game RuneScape, which had 25,000 attacks. Its owner company spent £6m trying to defend itself against DDoS attacks, with a revenue loss of £184,000.
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Damn! Didn't know DDos prevention services can be that costly.
 
M

m_dorian

Member
My sense of justice is justified from this sentence, one more year would not hurt though.
However, he was sixteen (16) when he started and anyone can act like or be an idiot when they are 16.
That is why i do not approve any "get screwed" post i am reading here.
 
K

Kayant

Member
m_dorian said:
My sense of justice is justified from this sentence, one more year would not hurt though.
However, he was sixteen (16) when he started and anyone can act like or be an idiot when they are 16.
That is why i do not approve any "get screwed" post i am reading here.
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Sure at the same time there are many people in the world that are mature at that age even less and doing something stupid isn't really limited by age.
 
B

Boke1879

Member
Hopefully the ball gets really rolling on this stuff, and swatting too.

When people start getting punished with Hefty fines and some jail time people might think twice.
 
P

PetrCobra

Member
MomoPufflet said:
Hard to get excited about 2 years. He'll walk out of jail directly into a 6-figure consulting job.
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Why is this bad? It just means he won't continue doing what he did, in fact he'll be on the other side. Plus, some people in here demanded that he pays the hacked companies what they spent/lost as a result of those attacks, well a six figure job might actually make that possible.
 
M

m_dorian

Member
Kayant said:
Sure at the same time there are many people in the world that are mature at that age even less and doing something stupid isn't really limited by age.
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And there are also many stupid 16 yo without any real life experience. "Get screwed" will not help them mature.
 
J

Justinh

Member
MomoPufflet said:
Hard to get excited about 2 years. He'll walk out of jail directly into a 6-figure consulting job.
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Will this actually happen to this kid, though?
Killthee said:
In any case, I'm not terribly interested in turning this post into a commercial for the Lizard kids; rather, it's a brain dump of related information I've gathered from various sources in the past 24 hours about the individuals and infrastructure that support the site.

In a show of just how little this group knows about actual hacking and coding, the source code for the service appears to have been lifted in its entirety from titaniumstresser, another, more established DDoS-for-hire booter service. In fact, these Lizard geniuses are so inexperienced at coding that they inadvertently exposed information about all of their 1,700+ registered users (more on this in a moment).

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/12/...omment-page-1/
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Oh, I misunderstood. This guy actually made the thing that lizard squad copied apparently?
Boke1879 said:
Hopefully the ball gets really rolling on this stuff, and swatting too.

When people start getting punished with Hefty fines and some jail time people might think twice.
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Yeah, swatting needs to fucking stop. It's not funny and I don't see why anyone would dream of doing it unless they were actually trying to bring harm to another person.

oh my God, his name actually is Mudd
Topolski said the sentence must have a ”real element of deterrent" and refused to suspend the jail term. ”I'm entirely satisfied that you knew full well and understood completely this was not a game for fun," he told Mudd.
Click to expand...
Interesting
 
K

Kayant

Member
m_dorian said:
And there are also many stupid 16 yo without any real life experience. "Get screwed" will not help them mature.
Click to expand...
Yes but it teaches them a lesson and show others actions have consequences. What should be done instead in this instance if not something to this degree given the scale of the damage caused as highlighted in the OP?
 
H

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
2 years seems okay for this I suppose, in that it's not purely punitive but also not a slap on the wrist. 2 years is a lot to a 20 year old, but not life ruining.
 
M

Maximo

Member
m_dorian said:
And there are also many stupid 16 yo without any real life experience. "Get screwed" will not help them mature.
Click to expand...

When I was 16 I was sneaking beers and taking P Plates when I was roaming the streets with mates, I didn't make a DDoS program making over £386,000 in US dollars and more in bitcoins and sell that to criminals...biiiig difference.
 
A

Apathy

Member
Lizard Squad is just a bunch of script kiddies and not 1337 h4x0rs?!?! No?!?! You don't say?!?!

Oh wait, except what everyone said that wasn't old media.
 
W

Wonder Peter

Member
The thing is, he created the tool but he wasn't the one responsible for the DDOS attacks on those servers they mention, it's like jailing the guy responsible that made a gun that was used by another person that commited the crime. Kinda weird, and 2 years in prison for this at this age, kinda excessive, there are perfect legal uses for this kinda of software.
 
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