Black Hole Exploit Kit is one of the most widely used Exploit Kit by cyber criminals and its author “Pauch” has been arrested by the Russian Authorities.
BHEK, provided a platform to deploy various malwares and infect unsuspecting users and was being actively maintained by its author. He also provided various services to cater to his clientele. Its not just BHEK which takes the hit but Cool EK too as it is also a part of Paunch’s arsenal of cyber weapons.
However, with his arrest last week, has not only caused a dent in the operations of BHEK but also ensured that there wouldn’t be any more updates of the infrastructure. However, this is a race , as race which includes various other exploit kits and every cyber-criminal will be vying to get the top-spot and fill up the void.
Immediately upon Paunch’s arrest , security researchers found that updates to BHEK/Cool EK had stopped, the cryptography service provided by Paunch had ceased to exist and many of the Bot-net masters were seen shifting over to various other EKs in order to maintain their foothold in the world of cyber-crime.
In near future, we will see a rise in sale of Various Exploit Kits and also their market share , however none would be able to match the heights scaled by BHEK / Cool EK.
It all started with a tweet by a Dutch Researcher Maarten Boone.
The first tweet mentioning the arrest of Paunch
