Cybercriminals could be raking in profits 20 times greater than the cost of their attacks. That is according to figures compiled by an IT security product firm. The Kaspersky Lab research compared the cost of the most frequently used hacker tools with the money stolen in a successful malicious operation.
Alexander Gostev, Chief Security Expert at Kaspersky Lab, says: “Buying malware is currently not a problem: it’s easy to find them on various hacker forums, and they are relatively cheap, making them attractive. A cybercriminal following this illegal path doesn’t even need any skills – for a fixed price they can get an off-the-peg package to launch their attacks at will. As a result, users need to be especially careful to ensure they don’t lose their money or data. They should also protect their devices and all online operations performed on them, using a specialised solution such as Kaspersky Internet Security – multi-device.”
For example, to create a phishing page that mimics a popular social network site, as well as setting up a spam mailing list that links victims to the fake site currently costs an average of $150. However, if the cybercriminals catch 100 people they can get up to $10,000 by selling sensitive data. The victims, in turn, lose their valuable contacts, personal photos and messages.
A mobile Trojan blocker is significantly more expensive – today it costs $1000 on average to buy and distribute the malware. However, it means the “payoff” itself is also much higher. The prices that the attackers set for unblocking a smartphone vary from $10 to $200, which means that from 100 potential victims they can get up to $20, 000.
The same sum can be earned through the use of encrypting ransomware but the “initial investment” is twice as high – about $2,000. As expected, the victims’ losses are considerably more damaging because the minimum sum requested by the fraudsters for decrypting the data is usually $100. To really hit the jackpot, fraudsters look for banking Trojans that target money directly. After spending about $3,000 on the malware, the exploit and the spam mailing list to spread the virus, cybercriminals could scoop up to $72,000. The average loss of an individual victim is $722.
