Stolen Data Cheaper
It’s rare I laugh out loud when reading the paper, but I did on this story. It is a great angle on a moribund topic, saying that there is such a glut of stolen finance and credit data for sale that it is driving prices down.
LONDON (Reuters) - Prices charged by cybercriminals selling hacked bank and credit card details have fallen sharply as the volume of data on offer has soared, forcing them to look elsewhere to boost profit margins, a new report says.
The thieves are true capitalists, and now they are experiencing one of the downsides of their success. What do you know, “supply and demand” works. And what exactly are they going to do to boost profit margins? Sell extended warranties? Maybe it is just the latent marketeer in me coming to the fore, but could you just imagine if hackers made television commericals to sell their wares? Cal Hackington? Crazy Eddie’s Datamart?
It’s time to short your investments in Cybercriminals, Inc.
-Adrian
Allen Baranov Jul 17
Adrian,
Take a look at my reply to this post on my blog (listed above). I think that this is the scariest news to hit in a long time.
alane Jul 17
It is not simply the falling prices, rather thieves are subject to the same economic forces as the established firms data is being stolen from. And the larger and more successful the hacker groups get, the more this will be the case as there is pressure for consistancy in revenue production. What made me laugh is the concept of boosting revenues through diversified opportunities. If that ‘elsewhere’ as described in the article is strong armed robbery or bribery, no one will be laughing. Hawking their wares on late night cable-access televisions with ‘2 fer 1 blowout’ specials, that would be funny.
Allen Baranov Jul 17
I did see the humour in your post.
It also makes me rather nervous because it will soon mean that we are not just protecting credit card numbers - we will need to protect everything.
And we are just not able to yet.
Interesting times ahead.