According to one of the biggest VPN service providers in the world, NordVPN, five million people worldwide have had their data stolen and sold on the bot market as of today, with 600,000 of those people being from India, making it the worst impacted nation.
Hackers sell stolen data from victims’ devices using bot malware on bot markets.
According to a survey conducted by NordVPN on behalf of Lithuania’s Nord Security, the stolen data included user logins, cookies, digital fingerprints, screenshots, and other data. The average cost of a person’s digital identity was estimated at 490 Indian rupees ($5.95).
Since the start of bot markets in 2018, NordVPN has been collecting data.
India has been dealing with cyber security concerns for a while. As recently as last month, multiple servers of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), a federal government hospital that caters to ministers, politicians and the general public, were infected on Nov. 23, a senior police official stated.
The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) had close to 6,000 hacking attempts in less than 24 hours on November 30, one week after the ransomware attack on AIIMS.
Indian cybersecurity regulations have only recently become more stringent. The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) now mandates that tech companies report data breaches within six hours of becoming aware of them and keep six-month records of their IT and communications activities.
The Genesis market, the Russian Market, and 2Easy were the three largest bot markets examined by NordVPN. Stolen logins from Google, Microsoft, and Facebook accounts were among those discovered.
According to Marijus Briedis, chief technical officer at NordVPN, “what makes bot markets different from other dark web markets is that they are able to gather massive volumes of data about one individual in one spot.”
And after the bot is purchased, the seller assures the customer that the victim’s data will be updated so long as the device is under the bot’s control.
In their investigation, NordVPN researchers discovered 667 million cookies, 81,000 digital fingerprints, 538,000 auto-fill forms, a large number of device screenshots, and camera pictures.
