It's Angler, get it? Image: Shutterstock
Even the biggest fish in cybercrime have to raise their eyebrows at this one: Security researchers say they've found proof that a hacker or group of hackers is making $30 million a year from their operation.Cybersecurity company Cisco announced today that had traced use of the Angler exploit kit, a notoriously effective and popular tool for hacking into computers, to servers belonging to hosting provider Limestone Networks. After some more digging, joined by researchers from Level 3 Threat Research Labs and OpenDNS, Cisco's researchers estimated that one hacker or group of hackers using these servers are targeting up to 90,000 victims a day.Cisco got to the $30 million figure by building on a few other estimates:
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- The average life of an Angler server is 24 hours.
- They worked out that there were likely around 3600 compromised users per day.
- Most users are targeted by ransomware, and on average have to pay $300 to the hackers.