Google: Most hacker-for-hire services are fake

Research published by researchers at Google and the University of California, San Diego, last week showed that most hacker-for-hire services are fraudulent or ineffective. By masquerading as a buyer demand, the researchers directly contacted 27 hacking services who provided hacking services and asked them to attack the selected Gmail account. “These victims in turn were ‘honey pot’ Gmail accounts, operated in coordination with Google, and allowed us to record key interactions with the victim as well as with other fabricated aspects of their online persona that we created (e.g., business web servers, email addresses of friends or partner).”

The research results show that 10 of the 27 hacker services involved have never responded to the researcher’s request, and 12 responded but did not really try to launch the attack. Only 5 hackers finally launched the test to attack the Gmail account. Of the 12 people who responded to the request but did not launch the attack, 9 said they no longer attacked the Gmail account, while the other three appeared to be fraudsters.

Researchers say these hacking services typically cost between $100 and $500, and no one uses automated tools to attack, all of which involve social engineering, and hackers use spear phishing to fine-tune each victim’s attack. The researchers concluded that the current sale of email hijacking services is not yet mature to the level of other criminal segments. You can view the original report for specific details of the study here.

Via: ZDNet