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McAfee's 2010 threat predictions
29 December 2009 , Written by Dhruv Tanwar
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In a recent report, McAfee's research arm, McAfee Labs, outlined the risks it foresees for the online world in 2010 to include increased threats related to social networking sites, banking security, and botnets, as well as attacks targeting users, businesses, and applications. The silver lining, it says, is that 2010 will also most likely be a year where there would be an increase in the effectiveness of law enforcement to fight back against cyber crime.  

In a blogpost, McAfee's David Marcus said social networks would be prime targets in 2010 for malware and other ill-intentioned attacks. He said with sites like Twitter and Facebook changing how we communicate, interact, and share on the web, they become increasingly attractive targets for cyber criminals. “As user bases for the top online social destinations reach record highs, cyber criminals are building out their criminal toolkits, taking advantage of new technologies, third-party applications, and hotspots of activity to exploit users,” he said in the blog post. For the average surfer, that would mean the need to avoid invitations from “Facebook friends” to play games that may seem to be gaining widespread popularity, and thinking twice before clicking. In 2010, McAfee foresees an increased vulnerability to attacks that blindly distribute fake applications across user's social networks, and through URL shortener such as Bit.ly and TinyURL since they make it relatively easier for cyber criminals to mask and direct users to malicious sites.

McAfee Labs also predicted that Adobe will overtake Microsoft as the top target for cyber criminals in 2010. Adobe products, specially Acrobat Reader and Flash, are on virtually every computer, and their mass success as two of the most widely used apps in the world will give a “field day” to cyber criminals preying on people using Adobe software, it said.

Other important risk trends to watch out for in 2010, according to McAfee, are:
  • Social networking sites such as Facebook will face more sophisticated threats as the number of users grows.
  • The explosion of applications on Facebook and other services will be an ideal vector for cybercriminals, who will take advantage of friends trusting friends to click links they might otherwise treat cautiously.
  • HTML 5 will blur the line between desktop and online applications. This, along with the release of Google Chrome OS, will create another opportunity for malware writers to prey on users.
  • Email attachments have delivered malware for years, yet the increasing number of attacks targeted at corporations, journalists, and individual users often fool them into downloading Trojans and other malware.
  • Cybercriminals have long picked on Microsoft products due to their popularity. In 2010, we anticipate Adobe software, especially Acrobat Reader and Flash, will take the top spot.
  • Banking Trojans will become more clever, sometimes interrupting a legitimate transaction to make an unauthorized withdrawal.
  • Botnets are the leading infrastructure for cyber criminals, used for actions from spamming to identity theft. Recent successes in shutting down botnets will force their controllers to switch to alternate, less vulnerable methods of command, including peer-to-peer setups.
  • In spite of the worldwide scope of botnets, we anticipate even more successes in the fight against all forms of cybercrime in 2010.

 

 

Countering these trends, McAfee predicts 2010 to be a good year for law enforcement and the ability to identify, track, and combat cyber crime worldwide. After a decade of cyber security research, coordination, and training undertaken by agencies across the globe, the community will reap the benefits of the effort put forth over the past ten years.
 

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