India or can say that the New Talent Hotspot for Cyber Criminals

India is emerging as talent hotspot for black-hat hackers,

Global cyber crime groups are outsourcing the jobs of hacking and creating malwares to India through cyber-mercenaries, who work underground.

It is possible to rent botnets - network of infected machines controlled by a hacker - to launch attacks on websites for as little as $2 per hour.

"Increasingly, India is becoming not just the victim but the host country with regard to cyber attacks,.

In 2012, McAfee Labs identified at least 850 ready-to-download malwares hosted on computers in India. In the first quarter of 2013, the number had jumped to 1,100.

According to a report by Akamai Technologies, an internet content delivery network, India is ranked eighth in the world in terms of origin of attacks.

There are underground forums where people post their hacking requirements and hackers bidding for it.

The money will be transferred to a PayPal account via a service called Perfect Money. It is type of an e-currency which can be transferred between customers, whose identities can be hidden and it can be redeemed for cash, in Dollars or Euros.  One can access the hacker forums only through Tor Browser that allows access to the 'hidden web' where these black hat-hackers operate.

In June 2013, there was a sophisticated and extensive cyber espionage attack that emanated from India which targeted Pakistan based government bodies among other anti-national forces.

According to Norway based security firm Norman, the attacks that continued for four years have been named as "Operation Hangover." The report says that the primary goal of the group is to gather intelligence from a combination of national security targets and private sector companies.

Another security firm, ESET, says a hacker group from India engaged in industrial espionage and spying on political activists. The victims of this attack resided in many countries, and particularly in Pakistan.

Overall, there is no estimate in the number of ‘hirable’ Indian hackers. According to security personnel, “the number of attacks from India was rising, but they could not pinpoint individual attacks that could be attributed to Indian hackers.”