The Darknet Trade in Stolen Account Details
Since we last published new data on the illicit trade in hacked accounts on the dark web, the darknet market landscape has shifted significantly and become increasingly fragmented.
None of the darknet markets we looked at in our previous report are still operating in 2023. While AlphaBay, a formerly major site that was shut down in 2017,[1] has been resurrected, there are now a dozen other completely new darknet markets where hacked account details are bought and sold.
See all of our darknet market investigations, beginning in 2018
For this latest report, we have switched our primary focus from the average pricing of hacked accounts on the darknet markets to investigating which stolen log-ins were most frequently listed for sale.
The goal of our research was to determine which accounts were most popular with cybercriminals and therefore most at risk of hacking.
We also continued to gather average listing price data for each brand and have included that data in our report.
We also streamlined our focus to only look at online accounts in the strictest sense of the term, which means we excluded bank accounts and credit cards.
In the process we assembled perhaps the world’s largest dataset of darknet market listings for hacked account details. We sifted through around 100,000 listings in total from 13 markets, including two Russian-language sites, and while most of those listings were for illicit drugs, cracked software and other contraband, we were able to identify more than 3,000 sets of hacked log-in details for over 500 online services.
Our dataset is over three times as large as that underlying any of our previous dark web research reports and reveals just how popular hacked accounts for streaming and VPN (Virtual Private Network) services are with cybercriminals.
Why did we do this research? To educate the public about the value of their personal data to identity thieves. Our hope is that this will lead to improvements in day-to-day information security. We have shared some tips to help people protect their data.
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Disclaimer
Our report does not suggest in any shape or form that the companies included or referenced have suffered security breaches. Furthermore, we have not purchased any of the credentials being sold on the Darknet.