Stolen Twitter passwords are now worth more to cyber criminals than credit card details, a study has found
Stolen Twitter accounts can now be worth more to hackers than credit card details, according to a piece of research which shows that the law of supply and demand affects the cyber crime industry in the same way it does legitimate business.
Credit card details - once the "currency of the black market" - were worth between $20 and $40 when fresh, quickly dropping to as low as $2 when "stale". But recent data breaches have caused a glut of data to flood onto the market, slashing the cost of stolen card details, writes security expert Michael Callahan of Juniper Networks.
Access to social media accounts such as Twitter can be worth far more, varying from $16 to more than $325, because of the hints they can provide on how to hack into other aspects of a victim's online identity.
"Social media and other credentials include usernames and passwords, which can often be used as an entry point to launch attacks on that person’s accounts on a number of other sites," he said.
"Given the number of people that tend to use the same username and passwords, hacking one account can often yield other valuable information such as online banking or e-commerce accounts. By stealing Joe Smith’s account information on one site, the criminal might gain access to his information on ten sites.
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