[BreachExchange] Four cheap dark web threats, and how to protect your firm

[Inga Goddijn]

http://www.itpro.co.uk/hacking/26820/four-cheap-dark-web-threats-and-how-to-protect-your-firm

It wasn't difficult to access the Silk Road dark market, where everything
from drugs to guns were bought and sold. Which is probably why the FBI
managed to infiltrate it so easily and ultimately shut it down
<http://www.itpro.co.uk/security/23828/silk-road-trial-ross-ulbricht-found-guilty>.
It's also probably why very few people traded in stolen data or the tools
of the cybercriminal trade there - hackers are just smarter than that.

While many dark market sites still exist with access through the Tor
network, more illicit forums are enjoying boom times with invitation-only
access. As visibility drops and these marketplaces become even darker, you
might think that prices would be going through the roof.

However, just as criminals will pay top dollar for zero day exploits
affecting popular applications, so has data emerging from breach after
breach tumbled into bargain basement territory
<http://www.itpro.co.uk/security/26572/117m-linkedin-account-details-for-sale>
.

You may well be surprised to learn just what hackers can buy for less than
a tenner these days - and how dangerous these threats are to your
organisation. Here's the we outline four of the most common dark web
exploit deals, and how you can protect your business.
£2.00 - Cpanel web management portal access

Access to compromised Cpanel website management portals costs just $3 (£2)
a pop. It's popular as well, because it provides a method for cyber
criminals to distribute malware.

Compromised businesses will have no idea that their genuine website is
acting as a malware distribution hub, serving up anything from bank account
stealing Trojans through to ransomware executables. When the penny drops
and someone connects their infection with that website, it is the business
that takes the reputational hit and not the lowlife who sold or purchased
the Cpanel login.

*Protect against it*

To mitigate such compromises, enforce strong password usage, keep up to
date with security patches (including all third party plug-ins, which may
have vulnerabilities), and create a side-door into your site.
£6.75 - 1,000 live email accounts

For just $10, or £6.75, hackers can buy no less than 1,000 verified email
accounts. Ten years ago you could easily pay that for a single live
account. This price crash suggests there is a massive oversupply in the
market, and reports of breaches involving millions of users' data, like
LinkedIn, demonstrate this is true.

*Protect against it*

To prevent your customers' details ending up in the bargain basement, there
are a number of things you can do. First, employ a layered security
strategy covering everything from staff awareness training, which mitigates
the social engineering threat, through to filtering at the mail gateway to
remove malware payloads. However, the single most effective method of
rendering email login data worthless is to encrypt it both at rest and in
transit.
£8.40 - Breached Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) servers

Compromised RDP servers can be found online for anything upwards of $12.50
(£8.40). That really is a bargain price as they enable attackers to launch
a privilege escalation style attack through servers the RDP is connected
with. That they are so cheap just shows how many compromised servers there
are out there at the moment. Kaspersky researchers recently discovered just
one dark forum with more than 70,000 RDP servers on sale.

*Protect against it*

As always, strong passwords provide mitigation against compromise, along
with enforcing network level authentication and connection encryption.
£10 - Half a day of DDoS attack capacity

These days, lazy hackers can simply hire Distributed Denial of Service
(DDoS) attacks. In fact, renting a DDoS is by far and away the most popular
method of causing this disruption to business services, for as little as
$15 (£10) per half a day. That won't buy you much by the way of bandwidth -
just enough to prove you can disrupt access (especially if the right
servers are targeted such as authorisation gateways) and scare the victim
into taking your seriously.

*Protect against it*

To defend against DDoS attacks on your network isn't easy, nor is it cheap.
That said, the more you pay the easier it becomes with DDoS mitigation
services that will monitor your network traffic for unusual spikes that
suggest an attack and then re-route it to a scrubbing centre where only
genuine traffic is returned.
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