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How To Go Broke Selling Zero-Day Exploits
Trailrunner7 writes "Despite all of the hand-wringing and moral posturing about the public sale of security vulnerabilities, it turns out that not many people are buying or selling vulns, and the ones who are aren't making much money at it. A new survey of security researchers who sell vulnerabilities either publicly or in private, directed sales found that the vast majority of the flaws sell for less than $5,000. Almost none of them sell for much more than $10,000. At those prices, there's little chance that this is going to turn into the chaotic Wild West marketplace that some people predicted. It's a small, mostly controlled market that isn't making anyone rich."
It means that supply is keeping up with demand.
Your god may be dead, but mine aren't!
I would think that the "companies" doing lucrative business selling exploits would not be voluntarily participating in a survey of this sort.
Better known as 318230.
Selling vulnerabilities == little money
Selling fully functional botnet time == probably a lot more
It's unfortunate, but I don't see it changing in the near future.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Right now there's no way to have much confidence that you're actually getting what you're paying for. If the exploit doesn't work, what recourse do you have? This is a pretty common element in any underworld economy, but is exacerbated by the Internet's anonymity and the newness/smallness of this particular market.
The bad news is, other underworld markets eventually overcame this problem.
Probably companies buying exploits on their own apps - cheaper and more reliable than whatever pidgin-English speaking offshore muppets currently do QA/testing for them.
In the unlikely event I get a computer-killing virus, trojan, or exploit (hasn't happened since 1985), I figure I'll just trash the thing and buy another one for $300-400. Computers have become disposable just like other appliances.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
But, but, it's an unregulated market!!! Evil, evil, evil!!! Soon there will be derivatives!!! And speculators!!! And high-frequency trading!!! The economies of nations will destroyed if this is not brought under government control now!!! (and taxed, of course)
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
...are the ones who aren't selling the exploits they find.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
All the agencies/Governments that want that kind of information invest far more time, money, and energy doing the same thing, and they have all their own experts. In fact, the 'sellers' of this kind of information may be 'giving it away for free' and not even know they have been 'visited'. Why pay for what you can get for free?
Guy: Hi, I have a security vulnerability, I'll tell you the details for $10k.
Software Company: Ok, show us the vulnerability.
Guy: Ok, I'll come over and demonstrate on my computer.
Software Company: Oh no, not on your computer, you could have set your computer up to be vulnerable. Do it to our computer, so we know you're not tricking us.
Guy: Ok, fine (launches attack on company computer)
Security Researcher A: Ok, the attack's coming in. Let's see what it's doing.
Security Researcher B: Ok, looks like a buffer overflow in the third step of the authentication process. Let's go tell our developers.
Guy: Guess what, it worked. Looks like I'm not tricking you after all. So, will you buy the vulnerability from me for the $10k we agreed on now?
Guy: ...
Guy: Guys?
Turn the idea into a product, turn the product into money.
Sell a service providing the customer with the FINAL (or as close to the final) product as possible.
Use your zero-day exploit to build a zombie army and sell spam services.
Or collected credit card info.
Or bank account info.
Or access to corporate networks.
The do-it-yourself customer isn't going to spend a lot of money for something that he might not be able to verify.
$10,000 is a chunk of change in former Soviet Union. For that matter, it's a chunk of change for me too even being in the States but not as enriching as former USSR.
In any event my understanding from info I read (mostly here on /.) is that the big money is made from herding botnets to sell time on for spam, phishing, etc. activities. The same people who put together these exploits in packages to sell are already using them to build gigantic botnets.
I would not be surprised if they are able to tap into the botnets built with exploit packages they sell.
FWIW, the range of IP addresses my web site has been targeted from for phpBB spamming is truly awesome, I haven't seen anything like it before in the eight years I've had the site up. Also the amount of money reported in news as stolen from bank accounts is staggering.
I don't know what kind of happy talk article this is, but botnets are alive and well and thriving, and someone is getting rich at the expense of lots of victims who also unknowingly supply bots for the net. Whether $10,000 from an exploit package sale, or for a multi-billion spam run, or transferred out of a bank account, it adds up.
rd
Neither did the mods. :)
This should be marked as Insightful.
(Currently marked as 3, Insightful)
You took that too literally. I think that the parent was talking about grandparent, not his post, even though he said this...
The author appears to be talking out of his ass, 5-10k is a lot of money in many areas. Heck, when I was in college I lived off less than 10k a year. A couple of exploits at that price would allow me to live fairly comfortable, if spent carefully.
Maybe in the US it's not much money, but in eastern Europe and most of Southeast Asia, $5000 is a shitload of money. Some places, that's more than people make in a year.
Maybe you think it's small change, but if you're living in some parts of southeast Asia, $5000 every 3-4 months feeds, clothes and houses your entire family.
You get a nice salary, unusually bright coworkers,
your choice of desktop OS, and extreme flex time.
It's a fun place to work.
The main location is 30 miles south of Cape
Canaveral and, oddly, right across the road
from the beach. We're also in Maryland and
Virginia.
People who are suitable tend to have experience
working on embedded systems, drivers, emulators,
compilers, or OSes.
There is a background check, and you must be
a US citizen.
itisme_meitis@yahoo.com
zalewski is right, but it doesn't change anything.
it's look like he is trying to do a pathetic buzz around himself to sell a book (probably very boring this time).
If the black hats share resources by selling one another exploits, or cloaking packages it just takes less work for the the white hats to patch the problem or break the cloak.
And you're obviously nothing more than some "massive 2 shits" new englander with his stupid "tea bagger" slang (and you obviously practice 'tea bagging' yourself, regularly), mindcontroller. He may have posted a great deal of exclamation points wasting his energy in that manner as you stated, but why on earth do you waste energy sucking on another mans scrotum?
$10K might not be chump change, but it won't make anyone rich. Putting together botnets using said attacks and selling time on them is a much easier way to good money and requires less genius time And buying time on the botnets and using them for decent spam attacks probably makes the most money of all, for the least amount of genius time.
become politician
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
I heard IBM is giving them away free with a USB key in Australia