Got $500? You can buy a hacked US Government website. Security vendor Imperva has found the black market and has posted about it on Friday.The company provides a screenshot of a list of compromised websites as advertised by the hacker, which contains information such as the level of access, the owner, traffic and price.
The hacker says he has control over a number of websites, including other military sites, government sites, and those belonging to universities, said Noa Bar-Yosef, Imperva senior security strategist. Prices range from $33 to $499, depending on how important or widely used the website is. “You can actually buy the capability of being the administrator of the website,” she said.
For example, one of the most expensive items is MySQL root access and high value information from www.scguard.army.mil, the website of the South Carolina National Guard. It costs $499.For the same price, one could acquire root access to the U.S. Army Communications-Electronic Command Web server (cecom.army.mil) or control of the admin panel for the General Staff of the Albanian Army (gs.mil.al) website.Root access to the Department of Defense Pharmacoeconomic Center Web server (www.pec.ha.osd.mil) is $100 cheaper.Full control of the University of South Carolina Beaufort website can be bought for $88 and control over edu sites from other countries comes at similar prices.
In previous times, we have seen US military department and NASA sites getting hacked. But this seems to be a very serious security breach. Some of the sites on the hacker’s list have been taken offline since Imperva’s report came out. This suggests that owners are working to fix the problems.
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