India ranks fourth in terms of servers hacked by xDedic marketplace: Kaspersky Labs

PUNE: India ranks fourth in terms of number of servers hacked as per a Kaspersky Lab report. As per a report released by Kaspersky, the xDedic marketplace, which appears to be run by a Russian-speaking group, currently lists 70,624 hacked Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) servers for sale. India ranked fourth with 3488 compromised servers listed on xDedi as of May 2016.

This is a global forum where cybercriminals can buy and sell access to compromised servers for as little as $6 each. The top 10 countries affected are: Brazil, China, Russia, India, Spain, Italy, France, Australia, South Africa and Malaysia.

Many of the servers host or provide access to popular consumer websites and services and some have software installed for direct mail, financial accounting and Point-of-Sale (PoS) processing. They can be used to target the owners’ infrastructures or as a launch-pad for wider attacks, while the owners, including government entities, corporations and universities, have little or no idea of what’s happening.


“xDedic is further confirmation that cybercrime-as-a-service is expanding through the addition of commercial ecosystems and trading platforms.

Its existence makes it easier than ever for everyone, from low-skilled malicious attackers to nation-state backed APTs to engage in potentially devastating attacks in a way that is cheap, fast and effective. The ultimate victims are not just the consumers or organizations targeted in an attack, but also the unsuspecting owners of the servers: they are likely to be completely unaware that their servers are being hijacked again and again for different attacks, all conducted right under their nose,” said Costin Raiu, Director, Global Research and Analysis Team, Kaspersky Lab.

The xDedic marketplace seems to have opened for business some time in 2014, and has grown significantly in popularity since the middle of 2015. In May 2016, it listed 70,624 servers from 173 countries for sale, posted in the names of 416 different sellers.