A sum-up of the evolution of malicious elements for next year

Dec 6, 2012 09:36 GMT  ·  By

Security firm Trusteer has released an interesting infographic that details the malware trends for 2013.

According to experts, in 2013 we’ll see an emergence of malware – such as Citadel and ZeuS – targeting the Google Chrome browser. Since Chrome is no longer immune to man-in-the-browser attacks, these threats will probably continue to target the popular application.

Next year, we’ll probably also see the emergence of native 64-bit Windows malware.

This year, we’ve witnessed a considerable increase in the number of malicious elements capable of detecting virtualization, debugging, sandboxing, and monitoring processes. These types of malware are dangerous because they can trick security solutions into believing that they’re harmless.

In 2011, there were 3 new financial malware families. In 2012, there were 5. Experts predict that in 2013, we’ll see about 8 of them.

Finally, experts warn that malware lifecycle is accelerating. Since security products are being constantly improved, cybercriminals can’t afford to waste too much time with the incubation and outbreak phases of the malware lifecycle.

This is why the timeframes of these phases will probably shrink even more next year.