WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Underground hackers throughout the world, particularly in Russia, have started to expand working hours and offer transaction guarantees in order to provide excellent service to customers, Dell’s SecureWorks said in a report.
"That trend [of improving services] has not died out, but rather increased, especially on the Russian Underground forums, where we saw many of the hackers expand their working hours to include weekends and even promising to be available 24/7," the report stated on Tuesday.
Dell’s SecureWorks, which provides intelligence-driven security solutions to counter cyberattacks, noted that "like any other market in a capitalist system, the business of cybercrime is guided by the supply and demand for various goods and services waxes and wanes."
"A guarantor for a legitimate transaction typically ensures that the exchange of data and payment takes place fairly by holding money and the product before distributing it to both parties involved in the transaction," the report explained.
The services offered by hackers include accessing Gmail and Yahoo accounts, and hacking into popular Russian and Ukrainian email providers such as Mail.Ru, Yandex, Rambler and Ukr.net.
An email hack costs anywhere from $65 to $129, according to the report.
The hackers also offer to access US and Russian socials media accounts, corporate emails and sell credit card credentials from around the world. Providing DDoS, or distributed denial-of-service attacks, is another popular service hackers offer.
In addition, Russian hackers are ready to provide full business dossiers on Russian companies.
"The hackers are selling information and documents from Russian organizations, including all of the credentials associated with a company’s various bank accounts (account numbers, logins, passwords, tokens)," the report pointed out.
Yet another hackers' service includes selling identities, passports, social security cards and other documents.
"The price for an actual US passport ranges from $3,000 to as high as $10,000," the report said. "Templates for US passports sell anywhere from $100 to $300, and the buyer must find their own printer."
Dell SecureWorks urged individuals and companies to implement protective measures to address the threat of potential cyberattack. The company advised building strong technology defenses, using encrypted email and employing vulnerability scanning, among other measures to guard against hacks.
