How your personal details get stolen and sold on the dark web

THERE is big business in selling the personal details of Australians on shady websites operating on the dark web and the potentially large sums of money to be made are changing the face of online crime, experts say.

The ubiquity of software exploits like those recently obtained and made public by the Shadow Brokers hacker group are “enabling everyday street thugs to get involved in e crime,” says Chet Wisniewski, the principal research scientist at cyber security firm Sophos.

But other groups that rely on the dark web to carry out their activities — the underbelly of the internet which more easily allows users to remain anonymous — are becoming increasingly sophisticated and professional in manner, he told news.com.au.

Almost anything you want — drugs, malicious code with instructions, IT infrastructure for rent like email servers, even consulting, is available from a huge host of vendors, all of whom are competing to convince buyers that their product is the best or most trustworthy…

Source: How your personal details get stolen and sold on the dark web