Kaspersky discovered the forum after receiving a tip from a European internet service provider. The market, called xDedic, is operated by hackers that have ditched their traditional business model of just selling passwords and have graduated instead to earning a commission from each transaction on their black market.
An aerospace company from the US, oil firms from China and the United Arab Emirates, a chemical company from Singapore and banks from several different countries are among companies whose servers were compromised by xDedic, Kaspersky said, declining to disclose any names.
As businesses ranging from healthcare to retailers go digital, hacking is getting more advanced and is often instrumental to traditional crime. Markets offering criminals both the tools to hack into networks and the spoils of successful attacks such as credit card data are growing in size and complexity. US authorities worked with counterparts from more than a dozen other countries in 2015 to dismantle a sophisticated computer forum known as Darkode, described as an online, invitation-only market for cyber-criminals to buy and sell products for infecting electronic devices.
Cybercrime services allow even low-skilled criminals to use acquired malicious software to attack their targets, Kaspersky said. People who bought access to servers on xDedic used the information for denial-of-service attack on businesses or to steal credit-card details from servers connected to systems such as computer terminals in shops.
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