Trustwave: The Feat kit and Ransomware are the most profitable industries in the world, yielding 1425% profits to the scammers.
Evidence coming from Trustwave shows that blackhats using Exploit kits can make money very easily by serving ransomware, Trojans, and ad stealers to their victims.
The company reports that fraudsters could make $84.000 a month using the CTB Locker ransomware, the RIG exploit kit, stolen web traffic, and services of the malware crypting packer.
"It is an excellent investment, although it is unethical and illegal," the company said in its annual report.PDF].
The scammers' costs each month are: $ 3000 for a "trusted" ransomware, $ 1.800 for a hacked high-traffic website, $ 500 for the RIG Exploit kit, and $ 600 for anti-virus crypters.
So with $ 5.900 in "business" expenses, they can hit too many victims at once, or even select individuals and businesses aiming for higher profits.
For those who do not know the Exploit kit are popular off-the-shelf hacking tools that have the ability to target a number of the latest zero-day vulnerabilities on platforms such as Adobe Flash, Java and Silverlight.
Trustwave determines the rogue profits based on an average of ransomers demanding their victims (300 dollars), though this amount often blows 5000 dollars on smaller scale and more targeted attacks.
Researchers recently reported in congress security agency AusCERT, that a retail company had paid up to $10000 to decrypt important files that could not be lost.
All of the above information proves the importance of a basic rule for electronics safety data: ALWAYS back up and when you're done back up again.
