A secure democratic Net is a fundamental right

First you would need some programmer to develop programs or do the hacking.

They cost about 5.000 dollar a month. Normally they earn 1/10th of that. I can see the wife and kid looking at their father programmer saying 'why don't you, everybody else is doing it and we also want some new clothes and a car and a holiday and a bigger room and a television and...." Or the young geek that needs the money to please his girlfriend.

You make them directly more productive by buying some malware and specific attacktools that only need to be adapted for your targets.

That will cost you between a few hundred and up to 15.000 dollars. I suppose the last one is to get to banking databases.

Secondly when you have the tools you need a server to use for the attacks for which you will need a rogue ISP that uses fast-flux DNS and other tricks to keep your real identity hidden and or intracable all the time. They charge about a 1000 dollars a month.

If you want to spam or extort than you will have to rent a botnet but as any virusdeveloper has now gone into that business that won't cost that much.

So if you would take two good programmers you would be up to 12.000 dollars a month, take 17.000 with some botnet services and take 3000 dollars for two computers and so for 20.000 dollars you are off and running if you don't use specific tools. If you want a head start take 5000 to buy specific attack tools and zero day malware and for 25.000 dollars you can start immediately from day one.Ok rent an appartement and other costs and you would be around 30.000 dollars all in.

this is peanuts for a crime organisation, let alone for industrial spionage or undercover state sabotage operations.

numbers come from here