14 DAY TRIAL // 2015 has been a busy year for cyber-criminals, but don't expect them to take a vacation for 2016 either, at least that's the conclusion of the McAfee Labs Threats Predictions Report, released today by Intel Security.
Aggregating personal opinions from over 33 security leaders across the world, the report shows on what areas organizations should focus their efforts for the upcoming year.
Ransomware will continue to cause troubles
The major threat and one that anyone could have predicted is ransomware, which has had a "spectacular" year in 2015, with some groups making hundreds of millions of dollars with their operations.
Don't expect ransomware to die down, and don't expect hardware-targeting attacks to do so either. Attacks on hardware and firmware will most likely continue, with Intel's security researchers seeing a growing market currently developing for such tools.
Newcomers in 2015, attacks on wearables and smart cars are expected to continue as well, with hackers building on previous knowledge and attack scenarios to create more sophisticated threats targeting these two new products.
Of course, Intel could not ignore business environments, where it sees cloud servers as a potential entry point for attackers if compromised. Intel also warns organizations about attacks targeting single employees, with hackers using an individual's inadequate security measures to compromise larger infrastructures, as an alternative attack scenario to taking top-shelf security firewalls head-on.
Adobe Flash Player was the most problematic application of 2015
Since the market for application vulnerabilities and exploit kits has been a major source of problems in 2015, Intel doesn't see a downward trend in this sector, mainly because law enforcement has barely made a dent in it during the past years. As usual, expect Flash to get the top spot when it comes to security vulnerabilities exploited in the wild, a place where the application ranked in Intel's report, but also in a similar report released by Recorded Future yesterday.
If you're looking for a bright side of 2016, Intel says that hacktivism in its true form is almost dead. "Many of the most dedicated hacktivists promoting their causes have been arrested, prosecuted, and imprisoned," states Intel's Raj Samani.
"What is likely to increase, however, are attacks that appear to be inspired by hacktivism but actually have very different, hard-to-determine motives," he also notes. "The reality is that modern hacktivism is nothing more than a case of copy and paste and, as we have seen, our ability to lift the fog of obfuscation will be harder than ever before."
For more, check out the full McAfee Labs Threats Predictions Report here.
