Grant Manser, 20, from Kidderminster, a town near Birmingham, UK, has pleaded guilty to selling DDoS stressers on the Dark Web that were used to bring down servers and websites in the UK and several European countries.
Manser began his life of cybercrime when he was just sixteen, saying he got the idea for creating and selling his own DDoSing tools when he was working for another hacker from the US and saw the amount of money the person in question was making.
The British teenager built his own DDoS stresser and began advertising it on websites hosted on the Dark Web. Manser operated between January 2012 and November 2014, during which time he created tools such as Dejabooter, Vexstresser, netspoof and Refinedstresser.
Local law enforcement discovered its operation after DDoS attacks on two UK schools, Harrogate and Hull College. Disgruntled students who had to stay after school for punishment purchased Manser's tool and launched attacks on their institutions' websites
Police detected several attacks using Manser's tools and eventually managed to trace his real identity, even though he was operating on the Dark Web.
Authorities arrested the teenager and seized his equipment. Manser has now pleaded guilty to six hacking charges under the Computer Misuse Act and four under the Serious Crime Act.
In the four years he ran his website selling DDoS stressers, Manser made £50,000 ($70,000). The price for tools was between £4.99 and £20 ($7 and $28), and payments were made via PayPal.
Prosecutors say Manser's business grew so large that he advertised for support staff. Manser also allegedly had 12,800 registered users, 400 of whom purchased his tools, launching 603,499 DDoS attacks on 224,548 targets.
The judge sentenced the teenager to two years in a juvenile detention center for 18 months. He must also carry out 100 hours of community work and pay compensation of £800 ($1,130).
The judge was lenient with the suspect because his lawyer claimed that Manser did not participate in the attacks, he only did it for monetary gain, which he mostly hoarded.
Furthermore, the judge was impressed by the fact that Manser built secret safeguards into software that prevented the tools from being used to attack hospitals, banks, the police, or the FBI.
