Hackers for Hire might not be the hackers you think they are and can be ‘con artists’ or scammers. A recent research published by Google in collaboration with University of California. The 11 page research might interest you aswell , which you may read or continue reading the article where I have taken out the interesting aspects for your consumption :
Research : Hack for Hire – Exploring the Emerging Market for Account Hijacking
Research Focus – Hire a Hacker
The researchers were interested in black market services where you hire self proclaimed hackers to get you access of accounts where you lack the capability of doing the same or maybe lack the moral courage of doing something illegal but comfortable of giving someone else the same task.
Hackers for hire need to give in alot of time and effort to execute a tailored attack which can be spearphishing or whaling. Social Engineering is the most successful nowadays and the most difficult hack to execute.
Monthly price that Service A charges across email and social network account providers. Over two years, the price per Gmail account increased from $123 to $384
That kind of thing takes effort. Most hackers for hire aren’t up to the task, to say the least. Many were outright scams – not too surprising and some wouldn’t even take on the job if it involved attacking Gmail.
For those services that did agree to take on the challenge of hacking Gmail accounts, the cost climbed over the course of two years, from $123 to $384 – with a peak of $461 in February 2018.
Prices for hacking Yahoo have been the same as Google, while Facebook and Instagram hacking fee have actually fallen to the current average of $307.
Hackers Price Pattern
Price differences for hacking various email providers and the change in pricing are likely driven by operational and economic factors: Google and Yahoo have gotten better at protecting email accounts, while prices have increased as the market for a specific service shrinks
Prices will naturally increase as the market for a specific service shrinks (reducing the ability to amortize sunk costs on back-end infrastructure for evading platform defenses) and also as specific services introduce more, or more effective, protection mechanisms that need to be bypassed (increasing the transactional cost for each hacking attempt).
– Excerpt taken from Hackers for Hire Research
Hackers for Hire are Frauds
The research proved it out by setting up bogus online buyer personas with which to approach 27 hacking-for-hire services. The researchers tasked those services with compromising particular victim accounts.
Those supposed “victims” were actually honeypot Gmail accounts operated in coordination with Google.
Only five of the services they contacted delivered on their promise to attack the supposed victims. The rest were scammers, demurred when it came to attacking Gmail accounts, or had lousy customer service, as stated in the research article:
Just five of the services we contacted delivered on their promise to attack our victim personas. The others declined, saying they could not cover Gmail, or were outright scams. We frequently encountered poor customer service, slow responses, and inaccurate advertisements for pricing.
Conclusion
Hacker for Hire might not be that big of a threat which we all feared. Internet is filled with reports stating that Dark Net is filled with hackers who would hack any account for you if you pay them. In the research they conducted only 11 services even “tried” to check the account required to be hacked while 5 among the 11 succeeded , rest 17 didn’t even bother to do anything. Very neatly summed up in the research :
We surmise from our findings, including evidence about the volume of real targets, that the commercial account hijacking market remains quite small and niche. With prices commonly in excess of $300, it does not yet threaten to make targeted attacks a mass market threat.
Have you ever had the need to hire a hacker ? or experienced a hack of your account ?
This post was last modified on May 27, 2019 2:22 am