Cybercrime has gotten so sophisticated that the underground market for such services is little different from more legitimate markets. Hackers on underground forums promote their abilities and products to prospective buyers by listing their experience and skills, while showing off how “honest” they are.

Some hackers even boast of things like 24/7 customer service, while many offer educational courses to teach people how to hack for themselves.

These revelations come by way of Dell SecureWorks, which has just published its third annual Underground Hacker Market Report. The report was put together by a pair of intelligence analysts from SecureWorks’ CISO INTEL team, which monitors numerous hacking forums around the world, with a particular focus on Russia – long considered to be the nerve center of cybercrime – and English speaking markets.

“Like any other market in a capitalist system, the business of cybercrime is guided by the supply and demand for various goods and services,” the report’s authors wrote. “Unfortunately for the law-abiding public, both sides of that equation remain strong, with everything from credit cards to hacker-for-hire services being sold online.”

Some interesting tidbits from the report include the price one can expect to pay in order to hack someone’s Gmail, Yahoo or Outlook.com email account. Hackers charged an average $129 for such services in the last year, though the price goes up considerably if a corporate account is the target, up to $500 per account. Russian email accounts are cheaper at just $65 to $105, while an IP address can be hacked for just $90.

Social media accounts like Facebook and Twitter can be hacked too, for around $129 per account. Somewhat oddly, Russian social media accounts like VR.ru and Ok.ru cost more to hack at $194 per user.

It’s also cheaper than ever to take somebody’s website offline, with criminals offering to carry out Distributed Denial of Service (DdoS) attacks for just $5 per hour. Other popular best selling sellers include Remote Access Trojans, starting at just $5, Angler Exploit Kits (a tool that’s used to spread malware from compromised or hacker-controlled websites) available for around $100-$130, and Doxing (locating and publishing private or identifying information about an individual, with malicious intent) , for just $20.

Physical products abound too, with ATM skimmers on sale at $1,775 a piece, fake European passports at $1,200, numerous bank account credentials, company dossiers, fake driving licenses and American Express cards all being frequently listed for sale.

SecureWorks’ report shows that cybercrime economy is rapidly modernizing and expanding all of the time, and despite the best efforts of the security world, it looks as if it’s only set to grow even bigger. The report is well worth a read, and can be downloaded from here (registration required).

Image credit: Alexas-Fotos via pixabay