Researcher Joe Stewart of Dell SecureWorks teamed with independent researcher David Shear to get an insider's look at the cost of hacking services. For $300 or less, you can acquire credentials for a bank account with a balance of $70,000 to $150,000, and $400 is all it takes to get a rival or targeted business knocked offline with a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS)-for-hire attack.
Meanwhile they have noticed that the cost of ID theft and bank account credentials are getting cheaper because there is just so much out there. Part of the problem is that so many US organisations have been hacked and personal details stolen. Personal identities, went for $40 per U.S. stolen ID and $60 for a stolen overseas ID in 2011 when Dell SecureWorks last studied pricing in the underground marketplace. Now those IDs are 33 to 37 percent cheaper.
Competition among the cybergangs is stiffer as more people join in the scams, the report said.