Nations Buying as Hackers Sell Computer Flaws

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/14/world/europe/nations-buying-as-hackers-sell-computer-flaws.html

By Nicole Perlroth and David E. Sanger
The New York Times
July 13, 2013

On the tiny Mediterranean island of Malta, two Italian hackers have been 
searching for bugs -- not the island’s many beetle varieties, but secret 
flaws in computer code that governments pay hundreds of thousands of 
dollars to learn about and exploit.

The hackers, Luigi Auriemma, 32, and Donato Ferrante, 28, sell technical 
details of such vulnerabilities to countries that want to break into the 
computer systems of foreign adversaries. The two will not reveal the 
clients of their company, ReVuln, but big buyers of services like theirs 
include the National Security Agency -- which seeks the flaws for 
America's growing arsenal of cyberweapons -- and American adversaries like 
the Revolutionary Guards of Iran.

All over the world, from South Africa to South Korea, business is booming 
in what hackers call "zero days," the coding flaws in software like 
Microsoft Windows that can give a buyer unfettered access to a computer 
and any business, agency or individual dependent on one.

Just a few years ago, hackers like Mr. Auriemma and Mr. Ferrante would 
have sold the knowledge of coding flaws to companies like Microsoft and 
Apple, which would fix them. Last month, Microsoft sharply increased the 
amount it was willing to pay for such flaws, raising its top offer to 
$150,000.

[...]

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