Babyfaced Grant Manser was just 16 when he created the damaging software in his bedroom and sold it on the “dark web”, a court heard.
The young computer genius then sold it to customers around the globe for as little as £4.99.
The “stresser” program worked by bombarding websites, servers and email addresses with so much information they crashed.
Among the victims were companies, schools, colleges and government departments.
Birmingham Crown Court heard Manser’s scheme operated over a four-year period between January 2012 and November 2014.
One UK victim was Harrogate And Hull College which saw its entire computer network crash for 14 hours after a disgruntled student brought one of Manser’s packages because he was unhappy at being kept behind for detention.
The court heard Manser accepted payment by PayPal and had a turnover of £50,000 during the period he was operating.
By the time he was arrested, Manser’s business was doing so well he had started to advertise for staff.
Manser, now aged 20, from Kidderminster, Worcestershire, pleaded guilty to six charges under the Computer Misuse Act and four under the Serious Crime Act.
Judge Nicholas Cole sentenced Manser to two years’ youth detention suspended for 18 months with the requirement to perform 100 hours’ unpaid work and also pay £800 costs.
But he was spared jail after the judge accepted that he only did it for financial gain and was “young and naive”.
Raj Punia, prosecuting, said the defendant was arrested at the family home in November 2014 by officers from the Regional Cyber Crime Unit and computer equipment seized.
It was found to contain four systems called Dejabooter, Vexstresser, netspoof and Refinedstresser, known in the computer world as DOS – “denial of service” software.
When deployed these DOS programs flooded a chosen website, server or email address with so much data they could not cope, causing them to temporarily crash.
Manser sold the software via the “dark web” – the hidden internet only used for criminal purposes – at prices ranging from £4.99 to £20.
Jamie Baxter, defending, said his client only designed and sold the systems to make money.
He said: “He is not a hacker. The system doesn’t take or hack any information from the websites being attacked.”
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