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- A hacker can do everything from hijacking a corporate email account to draining millions of dollars from an online bank account.
- Though many hackers may have malicious intent, some wear white hats and help companies find security holes and protect sensitive content.
- Below we explore some of many jobs a hacker can do for you.
Some parts of the web are the online equivalent of dark alleys where shady characters lurk in the shadows.
Afraid your girlfriend is cheating on you? There’s a hacker on the dark web who can get you into her email and social media accounts; that is, if you don’t mind sliding past legal or ethical boundaries.
These days you don’t have to delve too deeply into the recesses of the dark web to find hackers — they’re actually quite easy to find.
For instance, you can easily hire an ethical hacker on Fiverr for as little as $5. These so-called “white hats” help protect your website from malicious attacks by identifying security holes and plugging them.
Other hacking sites openly advertise services of questionable legality, offering illicit access to everything from Skype and Gmail to your college grades. InsideHackers‘ warns in its Terms of Service that hacking is a “dangerous industry” and “very, very risky business.”
In a 2016 report, Dell’s SecureWorks found that the underground marketplace is “booming” because hackers are “extending their hours, guaranteeing their work, and expanding their offerings” to lure in customers.
Whether you’re in need of a hacker or just curious about the industry, here are seven hacks for sale right now and what they may cost, according to the SecureWorks report and other advertisements on the web.
Note: Prices are listed in US dollars, but some hackers prefer to be paid in Bitcoin.
1. Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack: $5 – $25 per hour
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Kaspersky Labs reports that the average price for a DDoS attack is $25 per hour.
According to Kaspersky, you can pay just $5 for a five-minute attack and $400 to overwhelm a server, blocking legitimate users, for a whole day. The SecureWorks report quotes a slightly lower price of $5 an hour or $30 per day.
2. Online bank heist: $40 and up
According to the SecureWorks report, you’ll pay a hacker 1% to 5% of the money you drain from an online bank account in return for their getting you into it.
To hack a US-based account and steal $1,000, for example, you would have to pay a hacker around $40, and accounts with smaller balances actually result in higher fees, according to the report.
3. Rewards points transfer: $10 to $450
To siphon loyalty program credits from someone’s account, the price depends on the number of points in the account.
The SecureWorks report lists hacks for hotel rewards points starting at $10 for 50,000 points, up to $200 for 1,000,000 miles.
Frequent flyer miles on US airlines start at $60 for 200,000 miles. $450 will buy you 1,500,000 miles and, most likely, a trip around the world (perhaps to a country without an extradition treaty).
4. Infiltrate Instagram: $129
To get unauthorized access to an account on Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, or other social media platforms, SecureWorks pegs the average hacker fee at $129.
5. Hijack corporate email: $500 and up
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While the price to hack a Gmail, Yahoo, or Hotmail account is $129, according to SecureWorks, the report pegs the fee for corporate email hacking at $500 per mailbox.
Scams of corporate employees generally involve phishing, which requires sending phony emails masquerading as a known partner to steal usernames, password, financial data, or other sensitive information.
Corporate email hacking drained over $676 million from company coffers in 2017, according to the FBI’s Internet Crime Report.
6. Break into a cell phone: $21.60/month or more
If you’re looking to monitor an Android device (version 4.0 or later), you can use the Copy9 app to hack and monitor the phone. The app has a paid version starting at $21.60 per month.
Copy9 comes with 18 different features, including GPS tracking and sound recording. The app tracks the hacked phone’s information even when the phone’s offline, and once it’s connected to the internet, all tracked info is uploaded right into your account.
A downside of the app is that you need to have the target phone in your hand to install the spyware app onto it. When you hire a hacker, he or she can access the phone remotely, which, according to one Quora user, could cost between $500 and $5,000.
7. Hack into Facebook with permission, for rewards of up to $40,000
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Hacking Facebook is allowed, only if you alert the platform as to what you find. Facebook has a Bug Bounty program that pays hackers for finding bugs, so the company can patch them.
A recent Bug Bounty promotion offered a trip to the DEFCON conference for the best bug report in June. The company said in June that it gives out prizes between $500 and $3,000. But in 2017, Fortune reported that Facebook paid Russian researcher Andrew Leonov a whopping $40,000 for uncovering a glitch that allowed malware to hide in digital photos.
