Pierluigi Paganini March 26, 2017

How much costs a DDoS attack service? Kaspersky Lab published an analysis on the cost of a DDoS attack and services available in the black markets.

The DDoS attacks continue to be a profitable business in the cyber criminal underground. Powering a DDoS attack against an organization is even cheaper, running an attack can cost as little as $7 an hour, while a targeted DDoS against a company can cost up to thousands or millions of dollars.

Kaspersky Lab has published an interesting analysis on the cost of DDoS attacks. The experts estimated that the cost to power a DDoS attack using a cloud-based botnet of 1,000 desktops is about $7 per hour. A DDoS attack service typically goes for $25 an hour, this means that the expected profit for crooks is around $25-$7=$18 per hour.

Prices are highly variable, a DDoS attack can cost from $5 for a 300-second attack to $400 for 24 hours.

“This means the actual cost of an attack using a botnet of 1000 workstations can amount to $7 per hour. The asking prices for the services we managed to find were, on average, $25 per hour, meaning the cybercriminals organizing DDoS attack are making a profit of about $18 for every hour of an attack.” reads the analysis published by Kaspersky.

It is easy for criminals to pay for a DDoS attack service available in one of the numerous black markets. The services are easy to use and implement an efficient reporting system.

The majority of booters implements useful dashboards that allow them to manage loyalty programs and allow customers to plan their DDoS attacks according to the availability of the attacking infrastructure.

The experts at Kaspersky explained that prices for DDoS attack services depend on their generation as well as the source of attack traffic. For example, DDoS attacks powered by IoT botnets are cheaper than the ones powered by a botnet of servers.

“For example, a botnet of 1000 surveillance cameras may be cheaper in terms of organization than a botnet of 100 servers. This is because cameras and other IoT devices are currently less secure – a fact that is often ignored by their owners.” reads the report.

Another factor that influences the final price for a DDoS attack service is the target and its characteristics. Some services could be used to hit also well-resourced websites, such as the site of a Government. Of course, these services are more expensive.

“The cost of the service may also depend on the type of anti-DDoS protection the potential victim has: if the target uses traffic filtering systems to protect its resources, the cybercriminals have to come up with ways of bypassing them to ensure an effective attack, and this also means an increase in the price.” reads the report.

To give an idea of the cost, a DDoS attack against an unprotected website ranges from $50 to $100, while an attack on a protected site can go for $400 or more.

The cost of a cyber attack depends also on the location of targeted websites, DDoS attacks on English-language websites are usually more expensive than similar attacks on Russian-language sites.

Crooks can power DDoS attacks for extortion, ransomware DDoS have already turned into a high-margin business, experts at Kaspersky explained that the profitability of one attack can exceed 95%.

Victims of an ongoing DDoS attack are often willing to pay a ransom to stop the offensive.

All the data presented suggests that the average cost of DDoS attacks in the near future will continue to drop, while their frequency will increase.

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – DDoS attack service, cybercrime)

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