As with credit cards, the location of the victim whose information is up for sale has a significant influence on price. Japan, the UAE, and Europe have the most expensive identities at an average of $25. Credit card details used for online fraud are cheaper and can be sent in a text message. Physical cards are usually cloned from details stolen online, but can be used to withdraw from ATMs.
Dark Web Market Growth
Some are looking for illegal stuff they can’t buy elsewhere, like drugs or counterfeit documents. The story of dark web marketplaces kicks off with Silk Road, launched in 2011. It was the first big site where people could anonymously buy drugs using Bitcoin, and it gained a lot of attention, until it was shut down by the FBI in 2013. Four of the five most popular brands in this category were conventional cryptocurrency exchanges, with only Paxful standing out as a peer-to-peer platform.
Darknet Market Price Index 2020 Report
Hacked VPN log-ins were disproportionately popular on Russian markets, which accounted for 43% of all VPN listings. Kraken, Nemesis and Kingdom markets were home to the most stolen VPN credentials, with 60% of all such listings found on these three sites. Hacked VPN accounts are very popular with cybercriminals as they can be used as “burner” VPNs with no formal connection to their new users. Streaming was much less concentrated than other categories we analyzed, with the 20 most frequently-listed services accounting for almost 60% of all listings.
It is one of the most active and up to date markets and always provides new and updated malware and data. Genuine physical identity documents, such as passports and drivers licenses, are incredibly valuable for identity theft. Typically this means fraudulently opening lucrative lines of credit in the passport-holder’s name, which is then swiftly drained, leaving the unwitting victim with a huge debt.
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- There were almost three times as many NordVPN accounts than Windscribe, the next most-frequently listed VPN service.
- If you suspect your personal information may have been exposed online you should be using of the best identity theft protection services.
- The markets are often used to buy and sell personal data, along with other contraband including weapons and illicit drugs.
- Scan your devices regularly using trusted software, such as Malwarebytes for Windows and macOS, and Avira Mobile Security for iOS and Android.
- The perpetrators offered a biometric passport of the European Union for up to 4.500 euros.
Codecademy account credentials were the most frequently offered for sale, with 18 listings. There was another steep drop in volume to the next five most popular platforms, which were only listed for sale on the darknet markets around a third as frequently as peer-to-peer payment platform CashApp. More than one in five of the darknet market listings for hacked accounts that we found was for a VPN service. NBA TV, ESPN+, FuboTV and DAZN all appeared in the 20 most popular brands in the category.
Their average price in 2021 is $17, less than half the global average of $35. Credit cards, Paypal accounts, and fullz are the most popular types of stolen information traded on the dark web, but they’re far from the only data worth stealing. Sales of passports, driver’s licenses, frequent flyer miles, streaming accounts, dating profiles, social media accounts, bank accounts, and debit cards are also common, but not nearly as popular. Launched in 2023, STYX focuses on financial crime, providing stolen credit card data, hacked bank accounts and access to various cryptocurrency laundering tools. The following table shows which categories of hacked account credentials were most popular on the Russian-language darknet markets.
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The dark web is the number one digital resource cyber criminals turn to for tools and methods to launch cyberattacks, including credential stuffing. However, PayPal quickly denied any new breach, instead pointing to a “security incident” from 2022, which involved credential stuffing attacks and resulted in regulators fining the firm earlier this year. Some fullz even include photos or scans of identification cards, such as a passport or driver’s license. Miklos founded Privacy Affairs in 2018 to provide cybersecurity and data privacy education to regular audiences by translating tech-heavy and “geeky” topics into easy-to-understand guides and tutorials.
A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is designed to disrupt access to websites and other internet resources. This is achieved by overwhelming the targeted website’s server with thousands of connection requests, causing it to crash. The table below displays items according to their price, country of origin, and quality indicators. Fake money (mostly in 20- and 50-USD bills) is a very common and easy-to-find item. This seems strange because people can use a VPN to bypass streaming site restrictions. Online payment methods such as mobile payments and payment processors are becoming more popular among retailers.
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Today’s cybercriminals spread their activities across multiple platforms, making them harder to track and shut down. Despite growing crackdowns from law enforcement agencies, the dark web remains a hotbed of criminal activity, offering everything from drugs to stolen data. Where listings offered a selection of accounts at specific prices, each account was treated as an individual listing. This was likely due, at least in part, to the blocking of social media sites in Russia and the restrictions on VPNs in the country. Find out more about how different types of hacked credentials can be used for fraud in the common scams section of our Darknet Market Prices research hub. We also continued to gather average listing price data for each brand and have included that data in our report.
It is considered a go-to site for malware purchasing, providing keyloggers, trojans, and other Malware as a Service products. Valued at approximately $15 million, Abacus Market is one of the most lucrative platforms in the dark web ecosystem. Stolen documents of this nature – intercepted in the mail, for example, or stolen and sold to criminals by corrupt officials – fetch very high prices.
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“This business model not only has the smell of a pyramid scheme, it reminds us that this is nothing new, that organized crime has simply moved into the digital age.” Use this guide to learn how to easily automate supply chain risk reports with Chat GPT and news data. That event saw only 35,000 accounts exposed, a far cry from the millions now claimed by attackers. Interestingly, the price set for the alleged database is surprisingly low, raising further doubts about its authenticity. Get a personalized step-by-step Action Plan & ID Safety Score based on YOUR dark web hits. They also claim that while many of the leaked passwords appeared unique and “strong-looking,” a large portion were reused.
Top Dark Web Marketplaces Of 2025: A Deeper Dive Into Illicit Trade Markets
If you’re not already using one of the best password managers to protect your passwords online, start now. While SSN, name, and DOB are all fairly standard in fullz, other information can be included or excluded and thereby change the price. Fullz that come with a driver’s license number, bank account statement, or utility bill will be worth more than those without, for example. These bundles of personal info are called “fullz“, short for “full credentials.” So instead of looking at the prices of SSNs on their own, Comparitech researchers analyzed the prices of fullz. However, if a hacker gains access to the unsecured network you are on, they can easily view your account details and steal or modify your information.
But those tiers don’t have much influence on dark web prices, which are largely governed by account balance. These accounts were only listed a handful of times each across the 15 darknet markets that we trawled for this study and this scarcity was at least one factor in driving up their prices. In terms of individual brands, NordVPN was by far the most popular with 19% of all listings on Russian darknet markets. By comparison, the most popular brand outside of Russia was PayPal, which accounted for less than 5% of all listings on non-Russian darknet markets. Russian darknet market listings for stolen account credentials were much more concentrated around VPN and streaming log-ins, which account for 75% of all listings. Account details for NordVPN, easily the most popular VPN service on the darknet markets, typically changed hands for even less than that ($6).
Screenshot of listings for streaming account credentials on Nemesis darknet market. It should be noted that the number of individual account log-ins actually for sale on the darknet markets will be much higher than the number of listings we have identified. It is a hub for financial cybercrime and offers a wide range of illicit services and stolen data that cater to sophisticated cybercriminals. The short, scary answer is that some of your personal data is almost certainly already for sale on the dark web. Haveibeenpwned.com should be your first port of call, as it’ll help you find out which of your email accounts and old passwords have been compromised in a data breach.
He explains that beyond common attacks like injecting e-skimmers into websites, many attackers still target point of sale (POS) systems directly. In the past few months, VMware Carbon Black researchers have seen POS malware variants in use across a wide variety of retailers. These attacks rely on the actual physical swipes of cards, which then allow the malware to exfiltrate credit card data along with verification data such as a PIN numbers or zip codes. Most of use just have the standard personal account, but Premier and Business accounts also exist, and are up for sale on the dark web.
