An online marketplace has been discovered hawking access to more than 70,000 hacked corporate and government servers.

Kaspersky Lab discovered the forum after a tip from a European ISP. The market, called xDedic, is operated by hackers who earn a commission from each transaction. Victim companies include 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.

"It’s a marketplace similar to eBay where people can trade information about cracked servers," said Costin Raiu, head of global research at Kaspersky Lab, speaking to Bloomberg. "The forum owners verify the quality of the hacked data and charge a commission of 5% for transactions."

The server access goes for as little as $6 each, and can be used for everything from denial-of-service attacks to the stealing of credit-card details from retail shops. Some have used compromised servers to mine bitcoins.

“It wasn’t only government networks, but also corporations, banks, research institutions, telecommunication companies, to name a few," Raiu said.

Photo © NAPA