Cyberlife

In today’s world the cyber world is becoming more popular every day as people are beginning to see the benefit and ease of use the internet has. With this in mind you can expect the amount of cyber crime to increase, targeting the vulnerable people that may not be sure of what capabilities hackers have when they have the right tools.

It’s quite scary what some malicious people can do if given the perfect circumstances, in recent news it has been stated that ready to use tools for hackers are available on the market allowing anyone to potentially become a threat. These kits range from a single virus to an extensive kit allowing the true cyber thieves to create an arsenal of their own attacks. Not only can you buy them over the internet but the prices range up to around £500 for a “do it yourself” hacking tool kit.

The top end hacking tool kits guarantee that anyone who purchases the kit will be able to access technical support for 12 months allowing them to upgrade their software giving them the very latest software with new vulnerabilities making the job much easier.

As the internet has evolved the hackers have too, they have to keep up to date with internet security so they can remain unnoticed, it’s the people that are aware of the power of the software that are now selling the kits they used to anyone who is interested in getting started.

A member of the security group Sana, Tim Eades stated that some hacking communities offer the service of creating a single malicious program that will be able to go unnoticed amongst the latest security software. These start as little as £17 per program.

One program in particular, the MPack which costs up to £500 will allow people to update their software on a regular basis giving them the latest vulnerabilities aiding them to hi-jack PC’s in a number of ways. It also provides tracking software so that the hackers are aware of how successful they have been and information on the victims.

To show how powerful this software can be in the wrong hands, in late June 2007 it managed to threaten over 10,000 websites in just one single attack.

With the number of tools growing on a daily basis it allows unskilled people to join the cyber crime game and perform malicious attacks on vulnerable people using the internet. The Vice President of technical evangelism at Secure Computing stated that these tools do provide a use because it is allowing companies to spot vulnerabilities within software that were unknown so they can be fixed. The problem is they just need to keep one step ahead of the hackers in order to keep their software safe for people to use.

These groups could easily make a living if they stopped selling the kits and helped companies find vulnerabilities and bugs, the information is priceless to the creators and they would be willing to pay thousands of pounds per bug.