Need something hacked? Here’s the menu…
Hacking is on the rise worldwide, but in South Korea it continues to get easier. Various hacking services are now easily found on private message boards in South Korea, and price lists are available as if one was shopping for shoes. The use of Bitcoin, which hides the buyer’s identity have increased the volume of offered hacking services and have helped cybercriminals build more sophisticated business models that offer tools or services to less sophisticated users that can wreak havoc by attacking websites with a variety of products.
If you would like to bypass antivirus software that is used in South Korea, like Naver (035420.KS) Vaccine or V3 (053800.KS), such tools can be had for 10,000 KRW ($8.69 US) with the source code selling for $130. Need zombie PC for a DDoS[1] attack? You can buy them for $0.26/PC in South Korea, a bargain as they cost $0.43/PC in most Asian countries, $0.61/PC in the US, and $0.87/PC in Europe, which means you can buy 10,000 zombie PCs, enough for a sophisticated DDoS that can do serious damage to a company website, for $2,600. Zombie sellers advertise by showing videos with the number of PCs they have control over, indicating their place in the cybercriminal subculture, although it is easy to get ripped off by such criminals who don’t deliver and disappear after they receive their bitcoin payment.
Want to hack smartphones? Let the seller know the number and they will send a text that installs malware allowing you to advertise, control the phone, or examine its contents for passwords, payment accounts or other smartphone numbers that can be used to expand the malware’s reach to hundreds or thousands of phones. Such systems are also used to gather the zombie PCs mentioned above. Open the wrong e-mail and your PC becomes another zombie available for sale, and you would likely not even know it.
Of course, the South Korean National Police Agency knows it is happening, but the private message boards that are used to communicate prices and services are hard to locate and trace, and can disappear and reappear on a moment’s notice, while servers used for such purposes are usually housing in countries that do not have the capabilities or the desire to control such issues, and you thought that e-mail from the former Prime Minister of Namibia urging you to accept the $7 million dollars owed to you by a long lost uncle was annoying? How about someone using your computer to crash a website or using your PC camera to rob you when you are not home, or just ransoming your computer for a few hundred dollars? If a country as computer savvy as South Korea cannot control such issues, it might be time to look for a place in the woods…
[1] Distributed Denial of Service
If you would like to bypass antivirus software that is used in South Korea, like Naver (035420.KS) Vaccine or V3 (053800.KS), such tools can be had for 10,000 KRW ($8.69 US) with the source code selling for $130. Need zombie PC for a DDoS[1] attack? You can buy them for $0.26/PC in South Korea, a bargain as they cost $0.43/PC in most Asian countries, $0.61/PC in the US, and $0.87/PC in Europe, which means you can buy 10,000 zombie PCs, enough for a sophisticated DDoS that can do serious damage to a company website, for $2,600. Zombie sellers advertise by showing videos with the number of PCs they have control over, indicating their place in the cybercriminal subculture, although it is easy to get ripped off by such criminals who don’t deliver and disappear after they receive their bitcoin payment.
Want to hack smartphones? Let the seller know the number and they will send a text that installs malware allowing you to advertise, control the phone, or examine its contents for passwords, payment accounts or other smartphone numbers that can be used to expand the malware’s reach to hundreds or thousands of phones. Such systems are also used to gather the zombie PCs mentioned above. Open the wrong e-mail and your PC becomes another zombie available for sale, and you would likely not even know it.
Of course, the South Korean National Police Agency knows it is happening, but the private message boards that are used to communicate prices and services are hard to locate and trace, and can disappear and reappear on a moment’s notice, while servers used for such purposes are usually housing in countries that do not have the capabilities or the desire to control such issues, and you thought that e-mail from the former Prime Minister of Namibia urging you to accept the $7 million dollars owed to you by a long lost uncle was annoying? How about someone using your computer to crash a website or using your PC camera to rob you when you are not home, or just ransoming your computer for a few hundred dollars? If a country as computer savvy as South Korea cannot control such issues, it might be time to look for a place in the woods…
[1] Distributed Denial of Service
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