Worldwide, over 5 million people have experienced identity theft online. Of these, 130,000 are Italian whose data ended up on bot marketsold at an average price of 6 euros per person. The search for NordVPN underlines the importance of browsing protected, explaining how this part of the dark web works.
The data of 130,000 Italians sold on the dark web bot markets
Italy is in eighth place among the most affected nations, but is the first among the victims of the Genesis bot market. Indeed, the 30% of data sold on this dark web site they are Italian. Bot markets exploit data-harvesting malware that steals information from victims’ devices: logins, cookies, fingerprints, and other information. Your digital identity, stolen.
Marijus Briedis, CTO at NordVPN, explains: “What makes bot markets different from other dark web marketplaces is their ability to collect large amounts of data about a person in one place. And once the bot is sold, they guarantee the buyer that the victim’s information will be updated as long as the device is infected with the bot. A simple password is no longer of value to criminals when they can buy login data, cookies and fingerprints with a click for just six euros”.
The research, which you can find here in its entirety, analyzed three bot markets: Genesis Market, Russian Market e 2Easy. The most used malware to steal data to resell are: RedLine, Vidar, Racoon, Taurus e AZORult.
Research reveals that bot markets sell screenshot of your device, login (26.6 million in all: 720,000 were Google logins, 654,000 from Microsoft and 647,000 from Facebook). And then navigation cookies (over 667 million), Fingerprints (81 miles) e autofill forms (538 thousand), including those of payment cards.
A big risk
By buying this information, even a novice hacker can gain access to your Facebook account or break into your email, bypassing multi-factor authentication. He can steal your data, pretend to be you and publish false informationbut also use your payment methods.
Briedis explains: “Some strategies are even simpler. For example, a hacker can take control of a victim’s Steam account by changing their password. The account Steam they sell for up to $6,000 per account and can be easy money for a criminal.”
The advice therefore is to always use an antivirus, a password manager and encryption tools for the most important files. But also protect your browsing with services VPNsuch as NordVPN.