Underground economy

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The "Underground Economy" report contains a snapshot of online criminal activity observed from July 2007 to June 2008 by a Symantec team monitoring activities in Internet Relay Chat(IRC) and Web-based forums where stolen goods are advertised.

In the one year covered by the report Symantec's team observed more than 69,000 distinct advertisers and 44 million total messages online selling illicit credit-card and financial data, but 10 most active advertisers appears to account for 11% of the total messages posted and $575,000 in sales.

The report cites North America as hosting 46% of the underground servers Symantec observed for the year, with the remainder primarily in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.


Value of advertised goods and services illegally for sale online as a percentage of $276 million total market:

Credit card information - 56%
Identify theft information - 16%
Server accounts - 10%
Financial accounts - 8%
Spam and phishing - 6%
Compromised computers - 1%
Malicious applications - 1%
Web site accounts - 1%
Online gaming accounts - 1%


Prices of stolen goods and services:

Bank-account credential - from $10 to $1,000 depending on the balance and location of the account

Specific financial site's vulnerabilities - average price of $740, through prices did go as high as $2,999

Keystroke logger(malware used to capture a victim's information) - $23

Attack tools(botneck) - average price of $225

Host a phishing site - $10


Most-pirated software:

Desktop computer games - 49%
Utility application - 28%