#DarkWeb: Your complete digital life is available for Rs. 3,500
Dark Web is the hub for selling information stolen in account hacks and security breaches. The data chunks on these shady marketplaces carry logins for social media services, banking accounts, and credit/debit cards. But now, looking at individual cases, Kaspersky Lab reports that anyone's complete digital life can be sold on a Dark Web marketplace for a price less than Rs. 3,500. Here's more.
What is Dark Web?
For those unaware, Dark Web, aka DarkNet, is an encrypted portion of the World Wide Web. It is not indexed by search engines and can only be accessed with the help of specialized software, allowing users and website operators to remain untraceable. Dark Web is mostly used for illegal activities like selling logins and passwords of hacked accounts in bulk packages, categorized by demographics.
Kaspersky analyzed value of personal data
Considering the scale of information on the Dark Web, Kaspersky Lab investigated the value of personal data on the dark web - on an individual basis. They found each hacked account can sell for $1 or lower and an individual's complete personal data, including banking, social media, credit card information, can be sold for less than $50 or approximately Rs. 3,500.
Various services could be the source of such information: Kaspersky
"This can include data from stolen social media accounts, banking details, remote access to servers/desktops, and even data from popular services like Uber, Netflix, and Spotify, as well as gaming websites, dating apps, and porn websites which might store credit card information," said Kaspersky.
How this information can affect you?
Information compromised in a hack can be leveraged in a range of ways, but the most common threat continues to be financial and identity fraud. People can steal money from your bank account/credit card or use your identity to incur debt or to commit a crime. Hackers may even sell your information to corporations that may use your internet activity for targeting ads.
Common techniques to carry out attacks
Mostly, hackers use phishing to trick people into entering and sharing their login details from a fake page of a reputed website. They might even exploit a vulnerability/bug in a social platform's application to gain access to certain user data, sometimes even whole accounts. Hackers who recently stole access tokens for 30 million Facebook accounts also employed the same technique.
However, there are ways to prevent some attacks
While we cannot remove bugs/vulnerabilities on social platforms, we can enhance social and financial security by using appropriate tools and being more cautious while surfing/sharing information on the internet.
