VeriSign: Botnets rented for a few bucks an hour

[Matthew DeCarlo]

According to security firm VeriSign, unskilled cyber criminals can rent botnets for only a few bucks an hour, allowing them to launch DDoS attacks and cause other online mischief. After investigating 25 botnet operators, VeriSign iDefense found that the rental price started at less than $9 an hour, and about $67 for 24 hours.

The outfit discovered that many herders use common advertising methods to attract buyers, such as banner ads and forum marketing. Advertised services included a variety of attack vectors, including ICMP, SYN, HTTP, HTTPS, and Data, and one botnet operator even offered pricing for the takedown of sites with anti-attack protection installed.

With botnets so readily and cheaply available, the use of such services could become more widespread and dangerous since little technical proficiency is required. "While these attacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated, the criminals targeting your business may not be," said Rick Howard of VeriSign iDefense.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/39066-verisign-botnets-rented-for-a-few-bucks-an-hour.html

 

[seefizzle]

If you know where to look really dumb people can commit very sophisticated crimes, or learn how to commit them.

 

[Burty117]

This is sad really, why not go get a life (that includes a job, house, wife & kids) like everyone else instead of just pissing everyone else off? (that was to the people who actually run these things).

Honestly, Plus my Job is to defend companies from attacks such as these, out of the 240+ clients we have at work 2 have been infected by a virus that causes spam to be sent out and password cracking and thats it! plus both attacks didn't get these retards anything anyway because the firewalls were locked down and the exchange was locked down as well so the spam couldn't relay to anywhere and the password cracker couldn't send virus's back because the port it was trying to use was again stopped by the firewall.

Dumb Cyber crime people, GO do something with your lives.

 

[JMMD]

It would be nice if it were easier to get these systems shutdown. Clearly people are able to find them so it should be easy to track down the users and the machines and just close them down.

 

[treetops]

Meh cops will just have to setup stings like they do with people who try and hire hitman. The fines would give the government a nice junk of change as well. As soon as someone sent a fbi or police site money they would know who you are.