Capitalism Works! Even for Hackers?

InfoWorld is finally reporting on a rather disheartening trend that I have watched over the past year or so, which is the rise of the consumer black markets for malware. That’s right, just when you thought that those wily hackers couldn’t get any worse, they have finally figured out that it isn’t really nearly as profitable doing all that work yourself. Instead what you should do is go out and package up your knowledge and sell it out on the marketplace.

It used to be  that you would put all of your work into creating series of botnets out there. Basically a mass of compromised PCs that is waiting at your beckon call to do something. Of course, it was up to you to figure out what that something was…so you would sit around and wait for the right opportunities to present themselves…but not anymore. Now you can go out on the market and sell your botnets for around $1000.00 for a 10,000 computer unit.

That sounds like a lot right? Not really… 10K is small. Facebook helped the FBI take down a botnet of over 11 million computers just last December… that’s right 11 MILLION …. CNET – Facebook helps FBI take down $850M botnet crime ring .  That’s’ right .. the botnet was worth about $850 MILLION!

So if you would like to see all the gory details, you need to check out InfoWorld’s article then go update all of your Anti-virus and Malware detection software.

Prices fall, services rise in malware-as-a-service market

Cheers!
AJ