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Survey: Average Successful Hack Nets Less Than $15,000 (csoonline.com)
itwbennett writes: According to a Ponemon Institute survey, hackers make less than $15,000 per successful attack and net, on average, less than $29,000 a year. The average attacker conducts eight attacks per year, of which less than half are successful. Among the findings that will be of particular interest to defenders: Hackers prefer easy targets and will call off an attack if it is taking too long. According to the survey, 13 percent quit after a delay of five hours. A delay of 10 hours causes 24 percent to quit, a delay of 20 hours causes 36 to quit, and a majority of 60 percent will give up if an attack takes 40 additional hours. 'If you can delay them by two days, you can deter 60 percent of attacks,' said Scott Simkin, senior threat intelligence manager at Palo Alto Networks, which sponsored the study.
Oh wait, never mind.
" Hackers prefer easy targets and will call off an attack if it is taking too long. "
I'm shocked to hear that criminals using computers are exactly like criminals who have been practicing their trade since probably long before recorded history began.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
'If you can delay them by two days, you can deter 60 percent of attacks,' said Scott Simkin, senior threat intelligence manager at Palo Alto Networks, which sponsored the study.
So 40% of hackers are committed enough to still be working on a problem two days later.
I will hire all of them right now to replace my current Help Desk. Those kids give up within 10 minutes. I pay better than $29,000/year too.
hackers make less than $15,000 per successful attack and net, on average, less than $29,000 a year. The average attacker conducts eight attacks per year, of which less than half are successful.
Unless the first two numbers are way off, they suggest the average hacker has (less than) two successful attacks which would be (less than) a quarter of the average eight per year.
A quick rewrite:
hackers make more than $14,000 per successful attack and net, on average, more than $28,000 a year. The average attacker conducts eight attacks per year, of which more than a quarter are successful.
There, that's a much more positive spin on things!
If I was amoral and had the skills, I'd take up hacking at those prices. A 25% chance of $14,000 for a week's work? Where do I sign up?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
From TFA:
The average attacker conducts eight attacks per year, of which less than half are successful. Among the findings that will be of particular interest to defenders: Hackers prefer easy targets and will call off an attack if it is taking too long. According to the survey, 13 percent quit after a delay of five hours
So, you do 8 attacks, and give up if you don't succeed in five hours. Since unsuccessful attacks are part of the 8, I assume that the ones they give up on are also part of that. That means that they work 40 hours a year, for an average salary of 29k$, or around 800$/hr. Not bad al all :)
On one hand, it's not a lot of money. A decent job pays more.
On the other, apparently it's $29,000 for like two days of work.
I quit playing the stock market because it was hard. I averaged 1% per day on 3-5 day holdings (swing trading; day trading would be attractive if I had a large portfolio), but that was with 18 hours per day of research, waking at 4am to examine news and foreign markets, with loads of analysis of technicals and some fundamentals. It was technically sustainable, if I didn't go insane first.
Those two days of work for a hacker are followed by months or years of worrying which of the 40 odd jobs the FBI is investigating. I'd imagine an honest job provides a more enjoyable income than one in which you spend the following 7 years hoping the SWAT team doesn't boot your door in.
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They probably converted currencies and didn't bother with significant digits across the conversion. That creates oddly specific numbers even when the source number is rough.
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