[ISN] Study finds the average price for renting a botnet

From: InfoSec News <alerts_at_private>
Date: Fri, 28 May 2010 00:29:40 -0500 (CDT)
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/study-finds-the-average-price-for-renting-a-botnet/6528

By Dancho Danchev 
Zero Day
ZDNet.com
May 26, 2010

Based on an experiment conducted by researchers from VeriSign.s iDefense 
Intelligence Operations Team, involving 25 different "rent a botnet/DDoS 
for hire" underground marketplace propositions, they were able to 
conclude that the average price for renting a botnet is $67 for 24 
hours, and $9 for hourly access.

With only two static things within the underground marketplace that I 
can think of right now - greed and potential for growth, personally, I 
think that static price lists for a particular service don.t fall within 
this category.

Here's why.

The dynamics of the underground marketplace, have greatly matured 
throughout the past couple of years. The logical shift from static 
pricing lists, to the embracing of multiple pricing schemes such as 
price discrimination (differentiated pricing), or penetration pricing, 
naturally resulted in different prices for different targeted groups.

Basically, the propositions analyzed by iDefense, can be best described 
as variables that are tailored to different customers.

For instance, starting from the basic fact that cybercriminals actively 
multitask on multiple fronts, and the fact that access to botnets as an 
asset is a commodity good within the underground marketplace these days, 
certain propositions will even offer the "botnet for hire" option as a 
bonus/value-added service.

[...]


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Received on Thu May 27 2010 - 22:29:40 PDT

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