Hackers are selling stolen sensitive data of 6 lakh Indians for nearly Rs 490 each: Report

Out of 5 million people whose sensitive data has been stolen and sold on bot markets by hackers, 6 lakh are from India alone, making it the worst affected country, a study by NordVPN has found. It is estimated that 12% of all the data on the bots market is of Indian users. The average price of the digital identity of a person is pegged at Rs 490 ($5.95).
The VPN service provider says that it tracked data for the past four years since bot markets were launched in 2018.
What are bot markets?
A bot market is a place where hackers sell stolen data from victims’ devices with bot malware. NordVPN’s study says it looked into three major bot markets: the Genesis market, the Russian Market, and 2Easy. These markets have stolen login data of Google, Microsoft and Facebook accounts.
“What makes bot markets different from other dark web markets is that they are able to get large amounts of data about one person in one place,” said Marijus Briedis, chief technology officer at NordVPN.
What stolen data is being sold?
The study also suggests that the stolen data included user logins, cookies, digital fingerprints, screenshots and other information.
At least 26.6 million stolen logins were found on the analysed markets. Among them were 7,20,000 Google logins, 6,54,000 Microsoft logins, and 6,47,000 Facebook logins. Researchers also found 667 million cookies, 81,000 digital fingerprints, 5,38,000 auto-fill forms, numerous device screenshots, and webcam snaps.
“After the bot is sold, they guarantee the buyer that the victim’s information will be updated as long as their device is infected by the bot,” the researchers said.

How sensitive data is stolen?
NordVPN explains that first hackers install malicious software on the victim’s computer. The virus then creates stealer logs or documents where it collects all the stolen data by sniffing through the computer for valuable information about the victim and their hardware. “All the stolen data creates a person’s digital identity,” it says.
The most popular types of malware that steal and gather data include RedLine, Vidar, Racoon, Taurus, and AZORult. RedLine is the most prevalent of them all.
“Digital bots are becoming increasingly common. They operate in fields such as customer service, search engine optimisation and entertainment. Yet not all bots may serve good intentions – many of them can be malicious,” said security researchers.