Trending News - Teenager Made £50,000 By Selling Software Which Crashed Thousands of Websites Across The World

Teenager Made £50,000 By Selling Software Which Crashed Thousands of Websites Across The World

A resident of Worcestershire, Grant Manser is aged 20 now, he began developing and selling the software when he was 16. He was later put behind the bars in November 2014, as he was held guilty of 10 crimes and was jailed for two years in juvenile custody, expelled for 18 months. Manser was also asked to do 100 hours of work for free and pay £800 costs.

Manser reportedly sold crashing software to about 4000 clients and the clients who purchased it used this software for crashing 224,548 websites around the world. The websites which were targeted included business, schools, colleges, government departments from Poland, France, US and Netherlands.

Manser’s lawyer asserted that he is not a hacker at all and he developed this software with intention of earning money.

Defence lawyer in the case, Jamie Baxter said “He is not a hacker. The system doesn’t take or hack any information from the websites being attacked. He was only 16 when he started to do this and it was his immaturity and naivety which led him to commit these offences.”

The accused was reportedly arrested from his home in November 2014 by officers Regional Cyber Crime Unit and computers were confiscated.

The software was found to contain four systems called Dejabooter, Vexstresser, netspoof and Refinedstresser, which in computer world are known as DOS, “Denial of Service” software.

Manser had sold the software in the “dark web” [Secret Internet used for carrying criminal offences] with prices varying from £4.99 to £20.

Miss Punia claimed that Manser has 12,800 registered users, in which only 4000 purchased DOS packages. Those who purchased this package carried out 603,499 attacks on 224,548 targets. She further said that Manser preferred payment by Paypal and earned over £50,000 during his services time.

When the accused teenager was questioned by police that why he did it? He said that he had got the idea after working for one person in the US and witnessing how much money he made by the following the strategy.