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"WE have decided to reward you $30,000" should be "Because the market has decided that hacking top tier instagram accounts is worth a low seven figures, here

"WE have decided to reward you $30,000" should be "Because the market has decided that hacking top tier instagram accounts is worth a low seven figures, here is your $1,000,000 payout to save you the time, effort and liability of monetizing this yourself"

ISL 7y ago
There's one key omission in that list -- time, effort, liability, and prison.
- rolltiide 7y ago
  liability covers prison, it is not an omission.
paulpauper 7y ago
it would not be that profitable anyway after factoring server costs. say you hack into one celeb account. Instagram would immediately recognize the problem and fix it. but until they fix it, maybe you could make a few hundred dollars promoting some crpyto thing. Who knows. .s Instagram does not allow live links and suppresses posts that look like ads, so instead of being seen by millions of followers is only seen by thousands.
- rolltiide 7y ago
  thats not how the instagram economy works. accounts are basically worth an additional $100 for every 5,000 followers, multiplied by engagement percent. ie. 1% engagement account with 5,000 followers would be worth around $100, 2% with 5,000 followers worth around $200. forget accounts with high heat (A and B-list celebrities), people flip meme and inspirational accounts ALL DAY. (this a simplistic scale from how I've seen the opening bids be set, and the negotiations I've had). when when you aren't flipping and suddenly rebranding accounts, you get ROI by doing promos which have a fairly fixed cost. $10 to post about someone else or tag them in a story. the better your account is, the more you can charge and the less time you have to show someone. with stories you can stack promos all day and break even on an account in a week. you get ROI to break even very quick. (a hacker or phish may try other things like scamming D-list model's thirsty followers in Direct Messages.) > maybe you could make a few hundred dollars promoting some crpyto thing false. you'll get 2% of the entire currency pre-mined and minted straight to you, 3% of the funds raised, and upfront fees in the low five figures. and if the crypto is post-launch, you'll get upfront fees, a lot less tokens, and then the hundreds of thousands you'll make pumping it if people bite. otherwise, you have to buy yourself and hope you can pump it, and if you are poor thats the only way you'll wind up with "just a few hundred dollars promoting some crypto thing" yeah leave this to the pros and imagine people are still just buying fake followers or something relevant half a decade ago. honestly, I feel like Facebook should be acting as an escrow agent and taking a cut of the promos and account sales. Would be safer for participants and lucrative for FB.
- henryfjordan 7y ago
  except there'd be a ton of clickbait articles like "Kim K's insta hacked! See what the hackers posted" and they'd get free publicity
tptacek 7y ago
I don't see any evidence that the market has given a 5-figure value, let alone a 7 figure value, to temporary access to an Instagram account.
- FDSGSG 7y ago
  Instagram names regularly sell for 5-figure prices on swapd/ogusers. You wouldn't want to go after active accounts.
  - tptacek 7y ago
    And? How much are you going to pay for a script that lets you steal inactive Instagram accounts that you will then go on to sell on a grey market? You're not going to do it yourself, because when (not if) it's discovered how this happened, there will be an investigation, and you'll get caught, lose all the money you "earned" in legal fees, and (bypassing a login screen is textbook, right-in-the-strike-zone CFAA) spend months in prison. So you have to sell it to someone. How much are they paying? How many buyers are there for it? How long do they get to assume the script will keep working? The more people you sell it to, the less time each of them have to run it. And: when they get caught, if you've sold to several people, there's a significant chance you're going to get caught.
    - rolltiide 7y ago
      the hijacking happens on the grey market because there is no reliable escrow agent and its already against the terms of service of IG you don't need this script to find the accounts, you would use it when you promised to buy or sell an account and hack the phone number based 2-factor to either assume control of the account without paying, or steal it back but if you did want to scale this up to stealing normal user's accounts, stealing instagram accounts is merely a factor of changing the email address twice and then the account name. after which the original owner knows their account got stolen but has no record of the account lol, because they don't know the account ID, just the old username and email address which is super gone and doesn't match any record. you won't get caught primarily because there are too many barriers of entry for someone to take it seriously enough to investigate.

ISL 7y ago

There's one key omission in that list -- time, effort, liability, and prison.

rolltiide 7y ago
liability covers prison, it is not an omission.

paulpauper 7y ago

it would not be that profitable anyway after factoring server costs. say you hack into one celeb account. Instagram would immediately recognize the problem and fix it. but until they fix it, maybe you could make a few hundred dollars promoting some crpyto thing. Who knows. .s Instagram does not allow live links and suppresses posts that look like ads, so instead of being seen by millions of followers is only seen by thousands.

rolltiide 7y ago
thats not how the instagram economy works. accounts are basically worth an additional $100 for every 5,000 followers, multiplied by engagement percent. ie. 1% engagement account with 5,000 followers would be worth around $100, 2% with 5,000 followers worth around $200. forget accounts with high heat (A and B-list celebrities), people flip meme and inspirational accounts ALL DAY. (this a simplistic scale from how I've seen the opening bids be set, and the negotiations I've had). when when you aren't flipping and suddenly rebranding accounts, you get ROI by doing promos which have a fairly fixed cost. $10 to post about someone else or tag them in a story. the better your account is, the more you can charge and the less time you have to show someone. with stories you can stack promos all day and break even on an account in a week. you get ROI to break even very quick. (a hacker or phish may try other things like scamming D-list model's thirsty followers in Direct Messages.) > maybe you could make a few hundred dollars promoting some crpyto thing false. you'll get 2% of the entire currency pre-mined and minted straight to you, 3% of the funds raised, and upfront fees in the low five figures. and if the crypto is post-launch, you'll get upfront fees, a lot less tokens, and then the hundreds of thousands you'll make pumping it if people bite. otherwise, you have to buy yourself and hope you can pump it, and if you are poor thats the only way you'll wind up with "just a few hundred dollars promoting some crypto thing" yeah leave this to the pros and imagine people are still just buying fake followers or something relevant half a decade ago. honestly, I feel like Facebook should be acting as an escrow agent and taking a cut of the promos and account sales. Would be safer for participants and lucrative for FB.
henryfjordan 7y ago
except there'd be a ton of clickbait articles like "Kim K's insta hacked! See what the hackers posted" and they'd get free publicity

tptacek 7y ago

I don't see any evidence that the market has given a 5-figure value, let alone a 7 figure value, to temporary access to an Instagram account.

FDSGSG 7y ago
Instagram names regularly sell for 5-figure prices on swapd/ogusers. You wouldn't want to go after active accounts.
- tptacek 7y ago
  And? How much are you going to pay for a script that lets you steal inactive Instagram accounts that you will then go on to sell on a grey market? You're not going to do it yourself, because when (not if) it's discovered how this happened, there will be an investigation, and you'll get caught, lose all the money you "earned" in legal fees, and (bypassing a login screen is textbook, right-in-the-strike-zone CFAA) spend months in prison. So you have to sell it to someone. How much are they paying? How many buyers are there for it? How long do they get to assume the script will keep working? The more people you sell it to, the less time each of them have to run it. And: when they get caught, if you've sold to several people, there's a significant chance you're going to get caught.
  - rolltiide 7y ago
    the hijacking happens on the grey market because there is no reliable escrow agent and its already against the terms of service of IG you don't need this script to find the accounts, you would use it when you promised to buy or sell an account and hack the phone number based 2-factor to either assume control of the account without paying, or steal it back but if you did want to scale this up to stealing normal user's accounts, stealing instagram accounts is merely a factor of changing the email address twice and then the account name. after which the original owner knows their account got stolen but has no record of the account lol, because they don't know the account ID, just the old username and email address which is super gone and doesn't match any record. you won't get caught primarily because there are too many barriers of entry for someone to take it seriously enough to investigate.