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It's surprisingly cheap to purchase stolen credit card details and full blown identities

Your identity is worth around the cost of two movie tickets, or a pair of tickets and a bucket of popcorn, depending on where you live. That's according to a menu of items available in the underground market, a place where you can purchase someone's Visa or MasterCard details, including CCV code, for a mere $4. Fancy yourself an American Express gent? That runs $7, versus $8 for stolen Discover Card details.

These are just some of the prices revealed by Joe Stewart, Director of Malware Research for the Counter Threat Unit (CTU) at Dell SecureWorks, and David Shear, an independent researcher, who together dove into the dark underground marketplace to investigate what's being sold and for how much.

It's not really a surprise that so much stolen digital data is easily accessible with a little digging, but the low prices are certainly eye opening.  If you want banking login credentials for someone with between $70,000 and $150,000, it'll cost $300 or less. It 2011, $300 only netted you a bank account with $7,000 in it.

Going down the list, 1,000 infected computers is just $20, and the more you buy, the better the deal (5,000 infected PCs go for $90, 10,000 for $160, and 15,000 for $250). You can also purchase malware and exploit kits, as well as DDoS attacks and more.

"For the most part, it does not appear that the types of hacker services and stolen data for sell on the hacker underground have changed dramatically in the past several years. The only noticeable difference is the drop in price for online bank account credentials and the drop in price for Fullz or Personal Credentials," the researchers concluded.

As always, take a moment to make sure your security and computing habits are up to snuff. If you're a business owner, that also includes educating your employees on computer security.

For more, check out the full report.

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In the next few weeks, a lot of us will be ordering items online — whether for ourselves or for others — and having them shipped somewhere, hoping beyond hope that these parcels don’t get lost, stolen, drop-kicked, or run through a Blendtec just to see what happens. A recent study of packages received from e-commerce sites finds that you shouldn’t be terribly shocked if the box shows up looking worse for wear.

Between January and September of this year, the folks at StellaService ordered a total of 3,234 total packages from 121 different retailers. Nearly 10% (313) of those packages arrived with some sort of damage.

Which isn’t terribly surprising, given the insights of some of those who have worked in the shipping business at this time of year.

UPS had the highest rate of damaged packages at 11%, followed closely by the US Postal Service, with 10%. FedEx had the lowest rate (7%).

The not-as-bad news is that only 16 (5%) of the damaged packages contained products that were also damaged. So that’s about .5% of all the products ordered during those nine months. This is not to say that any damaged packages or products are acceptable — much like it’s not acceptable that .5% of Comcast’s customer service calls go badly — but it does mean that the sight of a beat-up box is not necessarily reason to assume your order is ruined too.

Also worth noting, there were 19 different sellers that didn’t have any damaged packages or products in the StellaService survey, among those were CB2.com,
Dell.com, Grainger.com, Rakuten.com, Shop.lululemon.com, Target.com, and Walmart.com.

Ever wonder where Starbucks got its name? How about Google or Yahoo?

It's not something we think about often, but the names of many major companies that now seem familiar are often made up, seemingly unrelated, and quite quirky. After all, why would you call a cell phone company BlackBerry? What does IKEA have to do with home goods and furniture?

We tracked down the etymologies of 15 of the world's biggest and most oddly named companies. You'll find that each of their names has a fascinating origin story.

SEE ALSO: The 25 Most Creative Companies In The World

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There are many changes that could improve cable television and broadband internet service in the United States, but “more mergers” certainly isn’t one of them. That’s why we started screaming hysterically in the Consumerist offices today when we learned that Charter and Comcast are both weighing their options and thinking about acquiring Time Warner Cable.

Charter is further along in its preparations, talking to banks about financing for the deal. Sources say that TWC has made it known it would prefer to get hitched to Comcast. Experts agree that Kabletown would be the better match, for reasons that include the word “synergies” and give us hives.

If Charter acquired Time Warner, that would create the country’s second-largest cable company.

Comcast seeks advice on possible Time Warner Cable bid: Sources [CNBC] (Warning: auto-play video)
Charter nears funding for Time Warner Cable bid: WSJ [Reuters]

The success of Breaking Bad prompted the folks at Sony to reconsider how much time, money, and energy they put into the production of motion pictures.

Instead of making 23 movies per year through its Columbia Pictures arm, the company will reportedly only produce 18. According to Advanced Television, the success of Breaking Bad is forcing the industry to rethink how it delivers content to consumers.

Sony’s track record at the box office is decidedly mixed at best. For every Amazing Spider-Man the company churns out, they have a weak performer like White House Down and After Earth on their hands. Since people are watching filmed entertainment at home more than ever, Sony is apparently ready to shift gears. However, movies fans will suffer.

“No cost is too sacred to cut,” Sony’s Michael Lynton explained during a recent presentation.

The Los Angeles Times reports that Sony announced the “significant shift” towards television production during a conference call on Thursday (November 21). With a little help from Breaking Bad, the company reportedly made an incredible $1.5 billion in revenue from its television division alone.

What’s even more impressive is that 75 percent of that total came from overseas markets. Not surprisingly, Sony TV boss Steve Mosko wants to begin focusing heavily on content that can help these territories prosper. The company operates 159 networks in foreign markets.

Zack Van, who heads up programming for Sony TV, said that Breaking Bad was a significant hit across the board. In fact, the acclaimed series generated far more scratch than the company anticipated. However, he stopped short of dropping a specific figure.

To capitalize on the popularity of the program, Sony is putting a spin-off into production. Better Call Saul, a spin-off series based on Bob Odenkirk’s character, is expected to be a hit as soon as episodes start arriving. The folks at AMC will air this show as well.

When asked if the series was a prequel or a sequel centered around criminal lawyer Saul Goodman, Odenkirk told Business Insider that he’s hoping the program will go both ways.

“I’d like to see what happens before and what happens after. I don’t know what they’ll do with that… but that’s what I’d like to see,” the Mr. Show alum said.

When asked if he intends to write or direct an episode of the Breaking Bad spin-off, Odenkirk said he currently has zero interest in splitting his duties on the show.

“One of the things I learned about ‘Breaking Bad’ was how much I enjoy acting when I don’t have another job to do on the set… how much more rewarding it is to act when you can really focus on acting and not be distracted by trying to meet a production requirement or concern yourself with challenges that directors have to concern themselves with all day long,” Odenkirk explained to the publication.

Are you surprised that Sony wants to shift the focus away from movies following the success of AMC’s acclaimed series Breaking Bad?

[Image via AMC]

‘Breaking Bad’ Prompts Sony To Makes Less Movies, More TV Shows is a post from: The Inquisitr News

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