Comparitech analysis shows that hackers can be hired to break into social media accounts, erase debts & even change students’ grades
Back in June, I touched base on the emerging model of Ransomware as a Service (RaaS), which brings together developers, dark web gangs, low-level attackers, and distributors among others to make it an extremely lucrative deal for all players involved. It has gotten so big, that almost two-thirds of ransomware attacks analyzed during 2020 came from cybercriminals operating on a RaaS model.
However, this is not the only worry for cybersecurity professionals. A new report by cybersecurity analysis company Comparitech has shown that anyone can hire hackers on the Dark Web to carry out illicit activities like breaking into social media accounts, erasing debts, and even changing students’ grades — all for sticker price.
Researchers at the company collected more than 100 listings from 12 hacking services to find out how much these mostly illegal services cost, and which seem to be in the highest demand. Although they did not include the websites for ethical reasons, they did say they collected 121 listings, which included prices and descriptions of the service offered.
Many hackers promised to finish the job within 24 hours, but some complex ones could take days or weeks. Most of the websites analyzed by Comparitech asked their prospective clients to communicate with them via encrypted email or secure chat app. Most of the prices for hacking services, which are listed below, were quoted in Bitcoin — but they have been converted to US dollars for easier understanding. Also, for instances where a price range was given, the analysis used the lowest listed price for reference.
⮞ DDoS ($26 per hour)—Distributed denial of service has become another popular business model, where nefarious players can bombard you with unwanted traffic to crash your website. Some hackers were charging more to attack sites with DDoS protection like Cloudflare.
⮞ Website hacking (Avg. price $394) — This category entailed hacking websites to get access to either the underlying web server or the website’s administrative panel to steal data and other important credentials.
⮞ Social media hacking (Avg. price $230) — As mentioned before, one of the common listings with WhatsApp mentioned the most. Listings of other popular social media channels were also found with a break up of the hacking prices.
⮞ Custom malware (Avg. price $318) — Customers can request custom malware, ranging from keyloggers to botnets to ransomware.
⮞ Changing grades (Avg. price $526) — One of the most common and one of the most expensive services as well. Hackers promised to break into school & university systems to change the grades and attendance records. Some hackers went as far as promising to steal the answers to upcoming exams.
⮞ Personal attacks (Avg. price $551) — This is a scary one where hackers can attack the client’s target through various means, including financial sabotage, causing legal trouble, or public defamation.
⮞ Location tracking (Avg. price $195) — One of the cheapest services, done by monitoring the IP address.
⮞ Computer & Phone hacking (Avg. price $343) — Breaking into business or personal devices to steal information, plant malware, or take some other malicious action.
⮞ Email hacking (Avg. price $241) — Hackers offered to either steal the password for the client or break into it and steal personal information.
⮞ Debt or Credit (Avg. price $257) — A few hacker groups claimed they could boost customers’ credit scores or clear their debt completely.
Other one-off hacker services not part of the categories above included Bitcoin wallet recovery, COVID-19 vaccine hospital database hacking, deleting any post from social networks, changing search engine rankings, or conducting security audits of your website. All said and done, the ecosystem of illicit hackers is evolving at a breakneck speed and Cybersecurity experts need a lot of catching up to do.
