A British teenager who made
£50,000 from his bedroom by selling software that was used to crash more
than 200,000 websites around the world has been convicted of hacking
offences. Worcestershire native Grant Manser, now 20, started
developing and selling the software at the age of 16. Having been arrested in November 2014, Manser was this week convicted of 10 crimes and sentenced to two years in juvenile detention, suspended for 18 months.
Manser allegedly sold website-crashing software to around 4,000 customers who used it to carry out attacks on 224,548 targets from around the world, which included businesses, schools, colleges and government departments from Poland, France, the United States and the Netherlands, to name a few.
Manser's lawyer insisted he isn't a hacker and that he developed the programs purely to earn money.
"He is not a hacker. The system doesn't take or hack any information from the websites being attacked," said Jamie Baxter, the defence lawyer in the case. "He was only 16 when he started to do this and it was his immaturity and naivety which led him to commit these offences."
Manser developed programs that help would-be troublemakers crash websites without having much technical knowledge.
One of the attacked sites belonged to Harrogate and Hull College, whose system crashed for 14 hours. The attacker was a student at the school who was unhappy to be in detention, it was revealed in court.
Manser developed four tools called "stressers" that facilitate denial of service attacks (DoS) by overloading servers, websites and email addresses with large amounts of traffic to essentially shut them down.
The programs, called Dejabooter, Vex-Stresser, netspoof and Refinedstresser, were sold on the dark web - a subsection of the internet that is hidden from mainstream browsers and masks the identity of the user - for as little as £4.99, up to £20. Manser took payment through PayPal and was thought to have made £50,000 total .
developing and selling the software at the age of 16. Having been arrested in November 2014, Manser was this week convicted of 10 crimes and sentenced to two years in juvenile detention, suspended for 18 months.
Manser allegedly sold website-crashing software to around 4,000 customers who used it to carry out attacks on 224,548 targets from around the world, which included businesses, schools, colleges and government departments from Poland, France, the United States and the Netherlands, to name a few.
Manser's lawyer insisted he isn't a hacker and that he developed the programs purely to earn money.
"He is not a hacker. The system doesn't take or hack any information from the websites being attacked," said Jamie Baxter, the defence lawyer in the case. "He was only 16 when he started to do this and it was his immaturity and naivety which led him to commit these offences."
Manser developed programs that help would-be troublemakers crash websites without having much technical knowledge.
One of the attacked sites belonged to Harrogate and Hull College, whose system crashed for 14 hours. The attacker was a student at the school who was unhappy to be in detention, it was revealed in court.
Manser developed four tools called "stressers" that facilitate denial of service attacks (DoS) by overloading servers, websites and email addresses with large amounts of traffic to essentially shut them down.
The programs, called Dejabooter, Vex-Stresser, netspoof and Refinedstresser, were sold on the dark web - a subsection of the internet that is hidden from mainstream browsers and masks the identity of the user - for as little as £4.99, up to £20. Manser took payment through PayPal and was thought to have made £50,000 total .
Manser was convicted in Birmingham Crown Court after pleading guilty
to six charges under the Computer Misuse Act and four under the Serious
Crime Act. He'll serve an 18 month suspended sentence, as well 100 hours
unpaid work and an £800 fine.
The judge described Manser as "young and naive".
Manser is one of a growing number of teenagers arrested and convicted for hacking offences. Following last year's high profile TalkTalk hack, the Metropolitan Police arrested four teenagers and one 20-year-old. The youngest of the teenagers arrested in relation to the hack, which affected 157,000 customers, was a 15-year-old from Northern Ireland.
Unlike the TalkTalk hackers, Manser's tool did not give users access to closed computer systems, and wasn't designed to compromise private data.
The judge described Manser as "young and naive".
Manser is one of a growing number of teenagers arrested and convicted for hacking offences. Following last year's high profile TalkTalk hack, the Metropolitan Police arrested four teenagers and one 20-year-old. The youngest of the teenagers arrested in relation to the hack, which affected 157,000 customers, was a 15-year-old from Northern Ireland.
Unlike the TalkTalk hackers, Manser's tool did not give users access to closed computer systems, and wasn't designed to compromise private data.
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