If we told you that it is possible for others to hire hackers to launch attacks against your business, would you believe it? Well, we hope so, because it is very possible and more common than you might think. Comparitech launched an investigation into the average prices of various hacking services on the Dark Web, and you might be surprised by how affordable and accessible they are. This is just more reason to take network security seriously.

While putting together these services, Comparitech looked at 12 different hacking sites and 100 different listings. These services, much like their legitimate and legal counterparts, are varied in pricing and scope, and they are paid for with Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies. Comparitech converted these prices to USD and reported on the average costs for these various hacking services.

Here are some of the services and price points for these services. We want to make it very clear that we are not showing these off to encourage you to take advantage of them. We just want to illustrate just how easily accessible they can be and to showcase the significant threat they can pose to your business.

• Personal Attacks ($551): These types of services might include defamation, financial sabotage, or legal threats.
• Changing Grades ($526): Students who are not happy with their grades pay hackers to infiltrate university grading systems and change their final grades to something higher.
• Website Hacking ($394): These attacks are made against websites or services with the intention of causing trouble or stealing information.
• Computer and Phone Hacking ($343): These attacks are leveraged against computers or phones with the intention of stealing information or deploying other types of threats.
• Social Media Account Hacking ($230): With these services, hackers can spy on or hijack people’s accounts.
• Email Hacking ($241): Hackers can steal access to email and either provide the password to the buyer or do the dirty work themselves.
• Distributed Denial of Service Attacks ($26/hour): One of the more unique services in terms of payment model is DDoS attacks, which launch traffic at a server in hopes of slowing it down or breaking it down entirely. These services are often paid for on a per-month or per-hour basis.

There are other services out there, too, but these are the most expensive and most common services.

Considering how low the barrier for entry is for these hacking services, individuals and businesses should be extremely concerned. Anyone could go on the Dark Web and hire someone to hack your business. We urge you to take this into account when planning out the security of your network. Compudata can assist with this aspect of managing your business technology.

To learn more about what we can do for your business’ network security, reach out to us at 1-855-405-8889.