Intel Security presents its McAfee Labs Threat Predictions Report, which predicts the main developments of the cyber threat landscape in 2016 and presents original ideas on what to expect from this scenario through 2020, in addition to the likely reaction of the IT security market. The report features insights from 33 cybersecurity leaders from McAfee Labs at Intel Security, the Office of the CTO, Foundstone Professional Services, and Advanced Threat Research teams. The collective point of view reveals short-term and long-term consequences for organizations and, in addition, an IT security sector that works to keep up with business opportunities and technological challenges, while fighting the hacker community whose objective is to attack the innovations that the sector develops.
"To address the realities of business, technology and threat landscapes, we need to help organizations get to where they need to be, using technologies that advance and not hinder their business, and understand what types of threats may be facing them both tomorrow and tomorrow. far into the future," explains Vincent Weafer, Vice President of McAfee Labs at Intel Security.
Cyber Threat Predictions for 2016
The threat predictions for 2016 cut across all trends, from likely threats related to ransomware (hijacker virus), attacks on automotive systems, attacks on infrastructure, the storage and sale of stolen data, among other likely problems:
· Hardware. Attacks on all types of hardware and firmware will continue, as the market for tools that make them possible will expand and grow. Virtual machines will be successfully attacked via rootkits in the system firmware.
· Ransomware. Anonymity networks and payment methods will continue to fuel the growing threat of ransomware. In 2016, more inexperienced cyber criminals will take advantage of ransomware , which will further accelerate its growth.
· Wearable Technologies. Wearable technologies that do not have built-in security protection will be preferred targets for cyber criminals because they can collect extremely personal data. More importantly, the fact that they sync with smartphones creates possibilities for accessing valuable data. Wearable technologies offer a number of attack surfaces: operating system kernels, networking and Wi-Fi software, user interfaces, memory, local files and storage systems, and access control and security software. And because they are most often used with web applications for sharing purposes, cloud virtual machines and web applications represent other attack surfaces.
· Attacks through employees. Companies will continue to improve their security postures, implement the latest technologies, work to hire talented and experienced people, create effective policies and maintain vigilance. Thus, attackers are likely to shift their focus and increasingly attack through employees, targeting, among other things, their relatively unprotected home systems to gain access to corporate networks.
· Cloud services. Cybercriminals, competing companies and agents of nation states will increasingly attack cloud services, which manage an ever-increasing amount of sensitive information. This information can be about organizations' business strategies, companies' portfolio strategies, next-generation innovations, financial data, acquisition and divestiture plans, employee data, among other data.
· Automobiles. Security researchers will continue to focus on new ways to exploit connected automotive hardware that lacks basic security features. Automobile attack region may include vehicle access systems, engine control units (UCM), steering and braking UCMs, engine and transmission UCMs, advanced driver assistance system UCMs, remote key systems, entry Passive keyless, V2X receiver, Bluetooth, USBs, OBD IIs, airbag UCMs, remote link apps and smartphone access.
· Stolen data warehouses. Stolen personal information is being linked together in massive data warehouses, making the combined records more valuable to cyber criminals. The coming year will see the development of an even more robust black market for stolen personal information, usernames and passwords.
· Integrity attacks. One of the most significant new attack vectors will be discrete and selective compromises to the integrity of systems and data. These attacks will involve capturing and modifying operations or data in favor of the perpetrators of the crimes, such as a malicious person who changes the victim's salary deposit settings to deposit it in a different account. In 2016, McAfee Labs predicts that we will witness an attack on the integrity of the financial industry, in which millions of dollars could be stolen by cyber criminals.
· Sharing information about threats. The sharing of threat information between companies and security vendors will rapidly increase and mature. Legislative steps may be taken for companies and governments to share threat information with the public sector. The development of best practices in this area will intensify, success metrics will emerge to quantify improved protection, and the sharing of threat information among industry vendors will expand.
Forecasts until 2020
The five-year outlook attempts to predict how the types of threat authors will change, how the behaviors and goals of attackers will change, and also how the industry will address these issues in the coming years:
· Attacks on the low operating system. Attackers will look for weaknesses in firmware and hardware to react to hardening applications and operating systems against conventional attacks. The bait will be the extensive control that attackers can gain from these attacks, as they can gain access to any number of resources and command administration and control resources.
· Detection leak. Attackers will avoid detection by looking for new attack surfaces, employing sophisticated attack methods, and taking the initiative to evade security technologies. Difficult-to-detect attack styles will include fileless threats, encrypted infiltrations, sandbox bypassing malware, remote shell exploits and remote control protocols, in addition to the aforementioned low operating system attacks that target exploited registries. -boot masters (MBR), the BIOS and the firmware.
· New devices, new attack surfaces. Falling device development costs will lead to an explosion of new products, and if the history of new computing paradigms has taught us anything, that fact may indicate that many will be designed with security protection in the background. Although the peak of IoT (Internet of Things) and wearable technology attacks has not yet occurred, we can predict by 2020 that the foundations of these systems will provide substantial penetration levels to the point of attracting attackers.
· Cyber warfare will change the economy. Cyber warfare between countries will continue to be a geopolitical payoff, shifting the balance of power in many international relationships. McAfee Labs predicts that cyberattacks in the areas of intelligence gathering and clandestine manipulation of markets in favor of attackers will become more effective.
· Security industry response. The security industry will develop more effective tools to detect and remediate sophisticated attacks. It will be possible to develop a behavioral analysis to detect irregular user activity, which may indicate compromised accounts. Shared threat information is likely to provide systems with faster, better-quality protection. Cloud-integrated security can improve visibility and control. Finally, automated detection and remediation technology promises to protect businesses against the most common attacks, freeing IT security professionals to focus on the most serious security incidents.
"Tracking, predicting and getting ahead of adversaries requires us to have the same level of information exchange, cloud computing, distribution capability, platform agility and also the same human resources that cyber criminals typically employ," Weafer continued. "To win the battles against future threats, organizations must see more, learn more, detect and react more quickly, and make the most of all the technical and human resources at their disposal."
To learn more, read the full report: McAfee Labs Report with Threat Predictions.
To learn how organizations can prepare for future threat scenarios, read our blog on the subject: Next steps: a journey into the future.
To learn how Intel Security is working with industry researchers and automakers to address connected car security issues, read the recent white paper on the topic: Your "Security Check" light is on.
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