Access To Thousands Of Compromised Government Servers Selling For $6 On Black Market

An anonymous reader writes: Researchers have uncovered an underground market selling information of over 70,000 compromised servers. Russia-based Kaspersky Lab revealed that the online forum, named xDedic, seems to be operated by a Russian-speaking organisation and allows hackers to pay for undetectable access to a wide range of servers, including those owned by government, corporate and academic groups in more than 170 countries. Access to a compromised server can be bought for as little as $6. This kit comes with relevant tools to instruct on launching denial-of-service attacks and spam campaigns on the targeted network, as well as allowing criminals to illegally produce bitcoin and breach online systems, such as retail payment platforms.

Comments

Produce Bitcoins?

[Yvan256]

This kit comes with relevant tools to instruct on launching denial-of-service attacks and spam campaigns on the targeted network, as well as allowing criminals to illegally produce bitcoin [...]

Last time I checked, which was months ago, it was nearly impossible to mine Bitcoins without specialized hardware. Are they hacking ASICs or what?

Re:Produce Bitcoins?

[Minupla]

It's nearly impossible to mine them profitably. E.g. you'd pay more in electricity then you gain. But if you have enough hosts and don't need to pay for the electricity you're using, or you have access to powerful servers that (again) you don't have to pay for, it changes the economics.

Min.

Re:Produce Bitcoins?

[Nos_Trebor]

There is nothing impossible about it. Its just that if you have to pay for the power and compute cycles its not worth it without ASICs. If you're stealing time/power on (many?) computers and contributing to a pool you'll make a very small fractions daily.

Re:Produce Bitcoins?

[houghi]

If you have enough machines running that you do not need to pay the electricity for, it becomes profitable.
So you use the network to spam and the processor to bitcoin. You have access to the machine, why would you NOT do it?

Re:Produce Bitcoins?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Last time I checked, which was months ago, it was nearly impossible to mine Bitcoins without specialized hardware. Are they hacking ASICs or what?

I'm guessing that perhaps the idea is assemble a botnet from the compromised machines in order to mine bitcoins night and day. Since the electricity and hardware cost you nothing it might be a viable (economical) way to make bitcoins. 70,000 servers might be enough to pop out a coin from time to time.

Re:Produce Bitcoins?

[ShanghaiBill]

it was nearly impossible to mine Bitcoins without specialized hardware.

It is not impossible, just inefficient. But if you are not paying the electricity bill, they why should you care about inefficiency?

Act now, supplies are not limited!

[RumGunner]

This news forum is starting to sound like an advertisement for hacked services. Get it together, entire IT industry.

Re:Act now, supplies are not limited!

[Errol backfiring]

I am afraid that government is not "industry". For example, the Dutch government had its national certificate compromised twice within 3 months. The first time was big news, the second only mentioned on IT news sites.

Re:it wuz haxx0rz!

[Joe_Dragon]

But that $6 gets you in to club fed.

Re:it wuz haxx0rz!

[WallyL]

Not to be confused with the other Club Fed, I presume.

Re:Rant about crappy headlines

[campuscodi]

You must be new

ummm, free advice

[stackOVFL]

This kit comes with relevant tools to instruct on launching denial-of-service attacks and spam campaigns on the targeted network

Advise to would be hacker(s): If you need this provided for you don't even try it. You WILL be caught in short order and I HATE jury duty.

Re:it wuz haxx0rz!

[lucm]

You cannot get access to "thousands of servers" for $6. It is $6 EACH.

Their business model sucks. They should have some kind of tiered pricing model, with volume discount and loyalty programs.