Pierluigi Paganini September 19, 2015

The popular group of hackers dubbed w0rm breached the hacking forum “Monopoly” offering for sale all data present in its database.

This is the classic example of the lack of rules within underground communities, today we will speak about a group of hackers who targeted another group and is offering their data for sale at $500.

According to MotherBoard, the hackers breached the hacking forum “Monopoly” that was popular due to the incursion of its members against international media organizations.

Now the data stored in its database are offered on another private community dubbed “w0rm.” w0rm group is specialized in the sale of computer exploits and stolen data, one of its members is claiming to be selling the database of “Monopoly,” which offer credit card fraud, botnets, and spam.

The precious archive is offered for $500, it is not clear which kind of data it includes (i.e. clear text passwords, salted hash, etc.)

“Although it is unclear what the database actually contains, be that email addresses and/or passwords, it’s being advertised for a fairly humble $500. There doesn’t appear to be any sort of personal connection or grudge between w0rm and Monopoly. Instead, the listing seems to be purely for the sake of business.” states Joseph Cox from Motherboard.

As correctly highlighted by Cox, despite it is quite easy to find any kind of stolen data in the underground, it is relatively rare to observe crooks selling access to data obtained from criminal community.

w0rm is a group of Russian hackers that hit headlines in late 2013, when they took over a BBC server, a few months later the crew breached the systems of the technology website CNET, VICE, and the Washington Post. The hackers offered for sale the databases of the VICE and CNET for 1 bitcoin each.

w0rm offered hundreds of zero-days through its website at prices ranging between $500 and $30,000.

According to MotherBoard that reported the news, a representative of the w0rm website explained that they offer exploits with the intent to highlight security vulnerabilities to “make the internet a safer place.”

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – w0rm, hacking)