Kaspersky Study: Dark Web Ads Offer Jobs, Careers in Cyber Crime

For developers, designers, testers and others displaced by cybersecurity layoffs, there’s always work in cyber crime, according to a new Kaspersky study.

The Kaspersky study examines the dark web job market. Kaspersky analyzed 200,000 employment ads about long-term or full-time jobs from 2020 through June of 2022.

To be clear, Kaspersky isn’t recommending these ads to jobseekers. It tracked this data to keep tabs on the bad guys.

Job requirements included creating malware and phishing pages, compromising corporate infrastructure, hacking web and mobile applications, and other responsibilities. The median levels of pay offered to IT professionals varied between $1,300 and $4,000 per month.

Some 41% of ads were posted in 2020, with activity peaking in March. That’s possibly because of a pandemic-related income drop experienced by parts of the population.

Polina Bochkareva is a security services analyst at Kaspersky.

“IT headhunting is one of the numerous topics which is constantly discussed on the dark net,” she said.  “Nowadays, tracking cybercriminals’ interests and continuous analysis of their activities is vital for companies that want to proactively respond to cyberattacks and keep their information security at the highest level. The more you know about your adversary, the better prepared you are.”

Scroll through our slideshow above for more from the Kaspersky dark web job market study.