Underground Hacking Economy Values Your Identity at $25

[[Coi] Mr.CLuBBeR]

It's surprisingly cheap to purchase stolen credit card details and full blown identities

Your identity is worth around the cost of two movie tickets, or a pair of tickets and a bucket of popcorn, depending on where you live. That's according to a menu of items available in the underground market, a place where you can purchase someone's Visa or MasterCard details, including CCV code, for a mere $4. Fancy yourself an American Express gent? That runs $7, versus $8 for stolen Discover Card details.
These are just some of the prices revealed by Joe Stewart, Director of Malware Research for the Counter Threat Unit (CTU) at Dell SecureWorks, and David Shear, an independent researcher, who together dove into the dark underground marketplace to investigate what's being sold and for how much.
It's not really a surprise that so much stolen digital data is easily accessible with a little digging, but the low prices are certainly eye opening. If you want banking login credentials for someone with between $70,000 and $150,000, it'll cost $300 or less. It 2011, $300 only netted you a bank account with $7,000 in it.
Going down the list, 1,000 infected computers is just $20, and the more you buy, the better the deal (5,000 infected PCs go for $90, 10,000 for $160, and 15,000 for $250). You can also purchase malware and exploit kits, as well as DDoS attacks and more.
"For the most part, it does not appear that the types of hacker services and stolen data for sell on the hacker underground have changed dramatically in the past several years. The only noticeable difference is the drop in price for online bank account credentials and the drop in price for Fullz or Personal Credentials," the researchers concluded.
As always, take a moment to make sure your security and computing habits are up to snuff. If you're a business owner, that also includes educating your employees on computer security.
For more, check out the full report.
Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook


More...