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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