Worcestershire man Grant Manser has pleaded guilty to six counts of computer misuse offences after selling booter software on the dark web.

The 20 year old sold the software while aged just 16 for between £5 and £20 a pop during the four years from January 2012, The Daily Mail reports.

He pleaded guilty to six charges under the Computer Misuse Act and four charges brought under the Serious Crime Act.

Judge Nicholas Cole handed Manser a suspended two year sentence in youth detention, 100 hours’ unpaid work, and £800 in costs.

Manser was arrested in November 2014 by West Midlands Regional Cyber Crime Unit officers for selling Dejabooter, Vexstresser, netspoof, and Refinedstresser, said to have downed some 224,000 websites. He had, according to prosecutors, 12,800 registered users, of which 4,000 purchased DDoS services and carried out 603,499 attacks.

One user was said to be a student at Harrogate and Hull College, who, incensed at getting a detention, used Manser's malware to down the college's network for 14 hours.

In an apparent attempt to evade detection, Manser claimed he had built safeguards into his software to ensure that certain organisations weren't attacked. These included the police, the FBI, banks and healthcare organisations.

Prosecutors said he turned over £50,000 selling the services. His profits were said to have been spent on upgrades to his home computing rig and on his motorbike.

At the time of his arrest, Manser had enjoyed so much success that he even advertised for staff.

Booters are one of the most prolific sources of distributed denial of service attacks, many of which are powered by reflection and amplification attacks. ®