How hackers earn money

For example, creating a phishing page to mimic a popular social network and setting up a spam mass mailing linking to the fake site currently costs an average of $150. However, if the users catch 100 people they can net up to $10,000 by selling sensitive data. The victims, in turn, lose their valuable contacts, personal photos and messages.

A mobile Trojan blocker is much more expensive - today it costs $1000 on average to buy and distribute the malware. However, the "payoff" is also much higher. The prices that the attackers set for unblocking a smartphone vary from $10 to $200 which means that from 100 potential victims they can get up to $20, 000.

The same sum can be earned by using encrypting ransomware but the "initial investment" will be twice as high - about $2,000. The users’ losses will be also higher because the minimum sum of the ransom requested by the fraudsters for decrypting the data is usually $100.

To really hit the jackpot, fraudsters look for banking Trojans that target money directly. After spending about $3,000 on the malware, the exploit and a spam mailing to spread them around, cybercriminals could scoop up to $72,000. The average loss of an individual victim is $722.

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