14 DAY TRIAL // Phished PayPal accounts, some of which complete with an email address and even funds, are sold on an underground Soviet Union website for just a few measly bucks to anyone who wants easy access to some money.
Brian Krebs discovered the page and even managed to alert one of the holders whose account was swiped in what was probably a phishing expedition.
“Compromised PayPal accounts are a valuable commodity in the criminal underground, and crooks frequently trade them in shadowy online forums,” Krebs revealed on his personal blog.
The location we're talking about is a website registered with the .su domain which was created for the Soviet Union in 1990 and even though it's not officially used anymore, black hats still prefer them for illegal activities.
Some of the hacked accounts commercialized on the rogue site still have a credit card attached, which means that even if the balance is currently zero, it might soon be filled with currency by the unsuspecting victim.
The price for verified accounts with close to 0 balance is $2.5 (€1.8) a piece and it increases to $45 (€34) for an account that holds more than $1000 (€750).
According to Krebs, the email addresses sold also come with an access password which means that they were probably obtained with the use of Trojans that were silently deployed on the computers of the dupe.
On the malevolent page the registration is closed, but I decided to check out another affiliated site discovered by the security researcher.
After registering, I was able to enter the underground forum which advertises all sorts of malicious elements and techniques. Bank log thieves, CC sellers and carders, poker game manipulators, all trade their possessions on these black market locations, and to make sure that intruders don't get access to the forum, someone has to vouch for you or you have to pay a membership fee in order to gain full rights.