After hacking feats,
cyber cons have stooped to selling hacked profiles on the dreadful dark web for
a minimal cost of Rs. 140/day.
What’s even more
unsettling is the fact that organizations, market researchers and people
looking for business related data could also be behind this profile marketing.
The corner of the “dreadful
dark web” where these profiles are available is not accessible via regular
browsers.
By way of tools like “Tor”
which is an open source software that aids anonymous communication and access
to a whole new world of stolen passwords, data and profiles.
According to
researchers, other than cyber attackers the people tracking the consumer behavior
are after free access to video streaming sites that have already been paid for
by the victim.
It’s super
disconcerting the way rival companies are buying profiles to get "Intel" on their
competitors consumer base, sensitive data and even tracking key executives.
These hacking goons
are working in groups where one sells encrypted data and the other quite
conveniently decrypts all for dear money.
Then there’s a third group
which stores a list of the decrypted passwords into a central server which
provides data sets from these breaches.
WARNING! If you
happen to use a single password or even passwords that are a teensy bit
different for more than one log in sites and multiple websites you are in
serious trouble.
Reportedly, the
hackers have collected over 8000 databases from small websites singly. It’s
only up to the imagination what kind would have been from major sites.
On the dark sites,
the data is being sold in packages ranging from a minimal Rs.140 ($2) to a
staggering Rs.4900 ($70).
Payment methods of Crypto-currencies
like Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dash, Ripple, Zcash and Ethereum are all available to
the users’ comfort.
If several passwords
are bought from the website a profile could be fabricated within minutes, because
quite foolishly users have the same passwords for multiple sites.
This makes the user’s
behaviour extremely predictable and it becomes easy for the buyers to track the
victim’s activities all over the internet.
The people who spend
more time on the internet are more susceptible to such hazards because they are
easier to track.
A normal user’s passwords
are available for as little as a rupee but then the hot shot public figures
like politicians’ or actors’ passwords’ cost ranges from Rs.500-
Rs.2500/password.
QUICK TIP!
· Try not to use common, mainstream
passwords that are only easily hack-able and guess-able.
· Especially after a company experiences
a breach or a hacking feat they should make their security stronger.
· The systems should be made more accountable
than ever.
No company has faced
any adversities as of yet due to this profile marketing freak-show.
