Topic: New one-stop-shop botnet market uncovered

[Samker]

Researchers have uncovered what is said to be a fully-functional marketplace for building and selling botnets.

According to security firm Finjan, the site allows for criminals to obtain everything from malware and data to fully-functional networks of malware infected PCs.

Finjan chief technology officer Yuval Ben-Itzhak told vnunet.com that the new site was akin to an "eBay for stolen data."

"It is basically a hacker-to-hacker platform to provide everything you want, " he said.

"You do not need to go elsewhere, you get everything you need to do the business."

Though the sale of malware and botnets is hardly new, the site shows the crowing sophistication of such markets and the ease with which cybercriminals can enter the botnet space.

Not only does the new site make getting into the botnet business easier, it also makes catching the criminals harder. The company noted that much of the malware being offered utilized methods such as encryption and obfuscation to help evade security software.

Even the site itself is difficult to track. Ben-Itzhak explained that administrators behind the site have used techniques such as blacklisting and redirecting through proxy servers in order to keep security experts and law enforcement groups away.

While not as large as some previous attacks, the level of sophistication and amount of data being brokered points to a large and highly organized operation, said Ben-Itzhak.

"I think it is quite big," he said.

"The investment that they did in this platform and the number of participants indicates that there is a big business there."

(Computing)