Need a server with admin privileges that's cheap and doesn't ask many questions? According to Kaspersky, that will only cost you six dollars, and we're talking about a government server within the European Union. This "bargain of servers" appeared on an e-commerce forum known as xDedic, run by a group of Russian hackers, and the offer exceeds 70 thousand servers, distributed across more than 170 countries.
While "hacking" as a legitimate line of research and development in information security gains relevance through conferences, conventions, and open tournaments, malicious "hacking" also advances, focused almost exclusively on making money, no matter where in the world it comes from. Unfortunately, there are still many people out there who do not do a good job protecting their servers, and that simple "space" on the Internet becomes a product with a specific price, which can be used however its new "shadow owner" desires. This might sound like a very bad script for a Hollywood movie, but the people at Kaspersky warn us that it is real, and it is happening now.
Inside the xDedic Marketplace
The latest study published by the company focuses on the xDedic market, a dark trading forum that over the past two years has distributed credentials for hundreds of thousands of compromised servers. Everything suggests that xDedic is run by a group of Russian hackers, who keep every last detail of their server list up to date. Kaspersky's statistics reveal that xDedic's activity spiked in June 2015, reaching an all-time high last May, with more than 70 thousand servers available. Proportionally, the number of sellers is relatively small (416 active).
One of the options xDedic offers is filtering servers by country, which allowed Kaspersky to obtain specific data on the matter. On its last visit (once again, in May), they detected a total of 173 countries with affected servers, and the "Top 10" represents 49 percent of the total. In descending order: Brazil (6,540), China (5,023), Russia (4,020), India (3,488), Spain (3,155), Italy (3,119), France (2,474), Australia (2,448), South Africa (2,438), and Malaysia (2,140).
Kaspersky
