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Criminal are mostly hacking-by-numbers with exploit kits

Web scum build command and control mountain; bods mulls pending large-scale attacks.

Exploit kits are dominating the criminal hacking industry, but even though code fiends prefer colour-by-numbers cracking kits that isn't stopping them from assembling a vast command and control army domain name servers linked to popular kits are up 75 percent in the third quarter compared to 2014, according to a report.

It could lead to a flood of attacks should web scum take advantage of the available command and control infrastructure

Angler was the worst offender among exploit kits while the Matsnu domain generation algorithm played the biggest hand in the new command and control infrastructure.

Magnitude, Neutrino, and the popular Nuclear exploit kits helped bump the figures along in what was an increase on last year but a slight fall on the second quarter of 2015.

"The Infoblox DNS Threat Index in 2015 continues to remain well above the average for the previous two years, indicating that cybercriminals are continuing to expand their infrastructures," say the authors of the Infoblox and IID report.

"Exploit kits and phishing remain significant components of the index because these techniques have been successful for malicious actors."

The cost of buying into the exploit game has dropped from more than US$10,000 to about $1000 or less, depending on the kit.

As this reporter noted in June, security bods at Trustwave reckon web crims can clear a whopping US$84,000 a month for a paltry US$5400 outlay through the use of exploit kits to deliver malware and ransomware.

Crims would need to shell out US$3,000 for the ransomware, US$1800 for a hacked high traffic site, US$500 for an exploit kit like RIG and US$600 for anti-anti-virus fuzzers over a month to hit their profit targets. ®

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