Cyber mercenaries selling shady services on social media ‘dark markets’
Hackers openly offering to attack targets on behalf of anyone willing to pay them enough cash
HACKERS are available for hire on shady "dark markets" lurking on social networks, The Sun can reveal.
We have a found a number of cyber mercenaries who are willing to launch hack attacks against anyone for the right price.
Some of the hackers are advertising their services on Twitter, where ordinary people are invited to post "bounties" detailing how much they are willing to pay for their services.
This bounty is posted on Twitter and anyone who acts upon it is given cash in the form of Bitcoin, a hard to trace digital currency.
It is believed some of the hi-tech heavies are believed to be linked to a notorious hacking forum Hell, where hackers help others expose the name, address and other personal information of internet users - a process called doxxing.
One account, only known as Hacking Bounties, seems to be run by a Twitter user using the pseudonym @shallowgam3r, who describes himself as a ";low key hacker" and CEO of Storm Islands, which is a hosting site.
On the page, Hacking Bounties will post the Twitter handle of someone who has had a bounty set on them and hackers will set about trying to find their personal details.
It appears that once a bounty has been claimed the fee will then be taken from the person who set the bounty and paid to the hacker.
One of the most recent bounties posted by the account is for a Twitter user's address, phone number and full name with the attached bounty of $200.
The account also offers users the chance to buy hacking immunity, with the service being targeted at those with large YouTube followings.
One of the largest bounties set on the account was for the details of Keemstar, who is one of YouTube's most popular presenters.
Keemstar even ran a video in which he featured Hack Bounties, after which the owner of the page said he was excited by being featured in the video.
This act of betrayal shows that the people running Hack Bounties won't hesitate to aid in the hacking of anyone.
However it's not just Twitter accounts that are being hacked, several pages are offering hacked Spotify, Netflix and Sky accounts, which offer users full access to services at heavily reduced prices.
The sites are often people's personal accounts which have been hacked and are then sold on in exchange for Bitcoin payments or Amazon gift vouchers.
One seller claimed he had been doing it for years and was experienced at guaranteeing customers access to paid-for services at reduced prices.
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