Inside a $2.3 million criminal exploit business

  • 6 December 2013
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In October, Russian police announced they'd arrested the creator of the infamous "Blackhole" exploit kit, a readymade hacking tool that offered buyers an easy way to install web-based malware in exchange for $500 to $700 a month. Today, security writer Brian Krebs takes a closer look at the man behind the kit, a portly 27-year-old Russian national who went by the alias "Paunch."

Tracking Paunch's online footprint, Krebs sees him amassing millions from over a thousand customers, aided in part by a more sophisticated "Cool exploit kit" that rented for $10,000 a month. That money was spent on creature comforts like a Porsche Cayenne that Paunch shows off in one photo, but also more exploits, dug up from the seedier corners of the security community. By the end, Paunch was spending a whopping $450,000 for unpublished exploits, desperate to give his customers new ways to crack the ever-evolving security of web browsers.
 
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