Following a massive string of hacks taking place across various web platforms such as Xbox Live, Minecraft, and TeamSpeak, a UK-based teen hacker is headed to jail. According to The Guardian, 20-year-old Adam Mudd has been sentenced to two years in prison after creating the “Titanium Stresser” program at the age of 16, which was responsible for more than 1.7 million reported hacking attacks so far in its four-year life span. During that time, Mudd made a good amount of money selling the tool to various cyber criminals, reportedly earning the equivalent of over $495,000 in US currency and bitcoins.

During the two-day court proceedings the prosecutor Jonathan Polnay emphasized the “truly global” threat the hacking program presented, emphasizing the digital chaos that took place in “almost every major city in the world”. Mudd’s defense, Ben Cooper, did not deny his client’s crimes, but instead appealed the court to lessen Mudd’s jail time as he was “lost in an alternate reality” after being sucked into the world of online gaming. This withdraw from society Cooper attributed to school bullying and an undiagnosed Asperger syndrome.

Pleading guilty, Mudd admitted to the court of his own security hacks against his former college of West Herts College, one of which crashed the school’s servers, causing over $2500 USD in damage. Overall, he was discovered to have carried out 594 DDoS attacks against 181 IP addresses between December 2013 and March 2015. The official charges brought against him consisted of:

• One count of committing unauthorised acts with intent to impair the operation of computers
• One count of making, supplying or offering to supply an article for use in an offence contrary to the Computer Misuse Act
• One count of concealing criminal property

Mudd’s harsh two year sentence was something the presiding judge Michael Topolski took into account when sentencing. Topolski stressed that the length of the teen hacker’s jail stay needed to have a “real element of deterrent” in order to discourage this kind of wide-reaching crime.

“I’m entirely satisfied that you knew full well and understood completely this was not a game for fun,” The judge told Mudd. “It was a serious money-making business and your software was doing exactly what you created it to do.”

The two-year jail sentence may seem like a bit much on the surface, especially when considering he didn’t directly participate in any of the large-scale attacks. Still, an argument can be made Mudd’s actions have had too much of a negative impact on gaming and may warrant an extended stay in prison. What do you think? Are you happy that the teen hacker is behind bars? Let us know in the comments below and be sure to follow DFTG on Twitter for gaming and entertainment news 24 hours a day! To read up on previous hacks, check out these next few articles:

• Nintendo Switch Hackers Could Earn Up to $20k to Hack Their Systems
• Young Overwatch Hacker Arrested in South Korea
• CD Projekt Red Confirms 2016 Hack – Nearly 1.9 Million Accounts Exposed