Busted Black Marketplace Pops Back Up
October 5, 2016
In June, a vendor of access to hacked servers, xDedic, was taken down. Now, reports intelligence firm Digital Shadows, it has resurrected itself as a Tor domain. Why am I suddenly reminded of the mythical hydra? We learn of the resurgence from SecurityWeek’s article, “Hacked Server Marketplace Returns as a Tor Domain.” The article tells us:
After Kaspersky Lab researchers revealed in mid-June that they counted over 70,000 hacked servers made available for purchase on xDedic, some for as low as just $6, the marketplace operators closed the virtual shop on June 16. However, with roughly 30,000 users a month, the storefront was too popular to disappear for good, and intelligence firm Digital Shadows saw it re-emerge only a week later, but as a Tor domain now.
In an incident report shared with SecurityWeek, Digital Shadows reveals that a user named xDedic posted on 24 Jun 2016 a link to the new site on the criminal forum exploit[.]in. The user, who ‘had an established reputation on the forum and has been previously identified as associated with the site,’ posted the link on a Russian language forum thread titled ‘xDedic ???????’ (xDedic burned).
We’re told that, though the new site looks just like the old site, the user accounts did not tag along. The now-shuttered site was attracting about 30,000 users monthly, so it should not take long to re-build their client list. Researchers are not able to assess the sites traffic, since it is now a Tor domain, but both Digital Shadows and Kaspersky Lab, another security firm, are “monitoring the situation.” We can rest assured they will inform law enforcement when they have more information.
Cynthia Murrell, October 5, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
