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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.
It's not the computer that has value, it's your data.
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...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?
"I am a teabagging moron" would have been shorter. Why waste your energy on typing all that exclamation marks?
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Must be nice to have that kind of money to burn. For many of the rest of us, neither computers nor other appliances are disposable.
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. :)