Please support Game Informer. Print magazine subscriptions are less than $2 per issue
Creator Of DDoS Malware Program Sentenced To Two Years' Jail Time
The Central Criminal Court of England and Wales found 20-year-old Adam Mudd guilty after he admitted to creating a malware program designed to perform "distributed denial of service" (DDoS) attacks on computer networks. Mudd's Titanium Stresser malware is thought to have caused 1.7 million cyber attacks since its creation in 2013.
Mudd sold the malware under a pseudonym, accumulating nearly $400,000 from his 112,000 registered users. Included in the estimated 666,000 IP addresses that have been attacked by Titanium Stresser are several high-profile gaming companies, such as Microsoft's Xbox Live services, Minecraft, and the MMORPG Runescape. The DDoS attacks from Titanium Stresser overloaded these companies' networks with too much data, interrupting their connection to the Internet and leaving them unable to process user requests.
In an effort to make the sentence a strong deterrent to future cyber criminals, the judge sentenced Mudd to two years of jail, which will be served in a young offenders' institution.
Our Take
DDoS attacks are becoming more of a problem in the gaming industry as cyber criminals target companies' networks for their own gain. Though two years isn't the strongest deterrent, hopefully Mudd's arrest and sentence will call attention to this issue and discourage the practice.
I’d like to ask you to support Game Informer’s continued coverage of games with a subscription. For less than two dollars per issue, we mail you a full year of 10 print magazines, each with cover stories and preview features filled with exclusive details about the most exciting upcoming games. We profile and interview game creators. We look back on the rich history of gaming, and we celebrate what’s next.
Here on the website, we offer much of our content for free, including game reviews, daily news, videos, event coverage, and more – all with minimal ads.
We do so with a small editorial team, alongside contributing paid writers from around the world – over 65 individuals from 9 countries around the world, just in the last couple of years.
It’s not possible without support.
In a time when game makers and games coverage have faced hard struggles and layoffs, the future of this 30+ year magazine and community is at risk. Our new standalone magazine subscription is the number one way you can keep us alive – and we believe you’ll get a pretty fantastic gaming magazine in your mailbox every few weeks for your trouble.
Thank you.
