Sensitive Data of 6 Lakh Indians Stolen by Hackers and Sold at Rs. 490 each

Out of 5 million people globally, 6 lakhs Indians have had their sensitive data stolen and sold on the bot market making India, the worst affected country. The average cost of the digital identity of one person was Rs.490, revealed NordVPN, the world's largest VPN service provider. The stolen data include user logins, screenshots, digital fingerprints, cookies, and other sensitive information. All these data are sold in packets in the bot markets, which refer to places where hackers sell stolen data from victims' devices with bot malware. The study majorly looked into three-bot markets the Genesis market, 2Easy and the Russian Market. Out of 26.6 million stolen logins found on the bot markets, 7,20,000 were Google logins, 6,47,000 were Facebook and 6,54,000 were Microsoft logins.
Moreover, 667 million cookies, 5,38,000 auto-fill forms, 81,000 digital fingerprints, multiple device screenshots, and webcam snapshots were also found by the researchers. The bot markets are distinct from other dark markets as bot markets are able to get huge amounts of information related to one person in one place. The hackers also guarantee that once the bot is sold, the data of the victim will be updated till their device is affected by that bot, stated Marijus Briedis, chief technology officer at NordVPN. Security researchers also said that not all bots come with a good purpose, many can be malicious as well. These bots operate in multiple fields like customer service, SEO and entertainment and are becoming increasingly common recently. Vidar, RedLine, Taurus, AZORult and Racoon are some of the most popular malware used to collect and steal information out of which RedLine is the most common, stated the report.