hire a computer hacker

Hacker-for-hire services available online are what we thought they were -- scams and ineffective -- new research published last week by Google and academics from the University of California, San Diego, reveals.

"Using unique online buyer personas, we engaged directly with 27 such account hacking service providers and asked them with compromising victim accounts of our choosing," researchers said.hire a computer hacker

"These victims in turn were 'honey pot' Gmail accounts, operated in coordination with Google, and allowed us to record key interactions with the victim as well as with other fabricated aspects of their online persona that we created (e.g., business web servers, email addresses of friends or partner)."

The research team said that of the 27 hacking services they engaged, 10 never replied to their inquiries, 12 responded but never actually attempted to launch an attack, and only five ended up launching attacks against the test Gmail accounts.

Of the 12 who responded but never launched any attacks, nine said they were no longer hacking Gmail accounts, while the other three appeared to be scams.

Researchers said the services usually charged between $100 and $500 for their services, and none used automated tools for the attacks.

All attacks involved social engineering, with hackers using spear-phishing to fine-tune attacks for each victim. Some hackers asked for details about the victim they were supposed to target, while others didn't bother, and opted to employ re-usable email phishing templates.