February 12, 2013Dancho Danchev By Dancho Danchev  New
underground service offers access to thousands of malware-
infected hosts  Thanks to the success of multiple botnet
aggregating malicious campaigns launched in the wild,
cybercriminals are launching malware-infected-hosts — also known
as loads — as a service type of underground market propositions,
in an attempt to monetize the botnet’s infected population by
selling “partitioned” access to it.  How much does it cost to
buy a thousand US-based malware infected hosts? What about hosts
based in the European Union? Let’s find out. In this post, I’ll
profile a newly launched underground service offering access to
thousands of malware-infected hosts to virtually anyone who’s
willing to pay the price.  More details:  Sample screenshot of
the advertised underground service:   The price for a thousand
US-based hosts is $200, the price for a thousand EU-based hosts
varies between $60/$120, and the price for a thousand
international mix type of hosts is $20. How are