Help Net Security – (International) Exploit kit authors thrive due to PoC code released by whitehats. Having spent the last year following the development of the Blackhole exploit kit, a Sophos researcher says the last few exploits for zero-days added to it were all works of whitehat researchers who published their own exploit code online. In one particular case, the Blackhole author practically copypasted the published code into his exploit kit’s code. “The author of the Blackhole exploit kit seems to be more comfortable as a system integrator and Web application developer than anything else, and is far from being a hardcore vulnerability researcher,” he comments. Other researchers have noted a similar pattern. A little over a year ago, iSec Partners researchers analyzed the (at the time) top 15 exploit kits, and discovered that among the exploits they used - 13 in all - 3 were developed and used by attackers engaged in so-called advanced persistent threats (APTs), and 10 were developed by whitehats.