Tag Archives: Cybercrime Ecosystem

What’s the underground market’s going rate for a thousand U.S based malware infected hosts?

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By Dancho Danchev

Imagine you’re a cybercriminal that has somehow managed to infect a 1000 U.S based hosts and is looking for ways to monetize his malicious activity? He could easily start spreading spam or phishing emails, use the infected hosts as a platform for disseminating related malware attacks, or basically data mine the infected hosts for accounting data to be later on sold to fellow cybercriminals.

What if all he wanted to do is earn as much profit in the shortest possible amount of time without investing more efforts into the monetization of the infected hosts? Is the cybercrime ecosystem mature enough to offer him an alternative? Appreciate the rhetoric. The maturing cybercrime ecosystem is fully capable of offering him a high liquidity monetization approach for earning revenue by infecting hosts and spreading a specific undetectable executable pushed by the pay-per-install affiliate network that I’ll profile in this post.

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117,000 unique U.S visitors offered for malware conversion

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By Dancho Danchev

In 2012 it’s becoming increasingly common for cybercriminals to apply basic quality assurance (QA) tactics to their campaigns. Next to QA, they also emphasize on campaign optimization strategies allowing them to harness the full potential of the malicious campaign.

Recently, I came across to an underground forum advertisement selling access to 117,000 unique U.S visitors — stats gathered over a period of 8 hours — for the purpose of redirecting them to a Black Hole web malware exploitation kit landing URL. The traffic aggregation taking place through black hat SEO (search engine optimization), is aiming to exploit a group of users known to have high purchasing power, namely, American citizens.

Are such underground market propositions offering traffic exchange deals gaining popularity, or are they just a fad? What’s the infection rate for 117,000 U.S based users redirected to a BlackHole exploits serving landing URL? Let’s find out.

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A peek inside a boutique cybercrime-friendly E-shop – part three

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By Dancho Danchev

Over the past few months, I’ve been witnessing an increase in underground market propositions advertised by what appears to be novice cybercriminals. The trend, largely driven by the increasing supply of cybercrime-as-a-service underground market propositions, results in an increasing number of newly launched cybercrime-friendly E-shops attempting to monetize fraudulently obtained accounting data.

In this post, I’ll profile yet another currently spamvertised cybercrime-friendly E-shop, offering access to accounts purchased using stolen credit cards as well as highlight the ways in which cybercriminals obtain the account info in the first place.

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A peek inside a boutique cybercrime-friendly E-shop – part two

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By Dancho Danchev

Increasingly populated by novice cybercriminals thanks to the rise of cybercrime-as-a-service underground market propositions, the cybercrime ecosystem is also a home to a huge variety of underground market players.

This overall availability of managed cybercrime services results in an increasing number of underground market propositions by novice cybercriminals looking for alternative ways to monetize the fraudulently obtained goods. Although their service cannot be compared to the services offered by sophisticated cybercriminals, this niche market segment is becoming increasing common these days.

In this post, I’ll profile yet another recently advertised boutique cybercrime-friendly E-shop, run by novice cybercriminals, offering access to hacked servers.

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