Social media hijacking all business in 2014
Check Point, a provider of both hardware and software products for IT security, says that the hijacking of social media accounts will start to spread to more business-oriented social media sites in 2014.
Check Point South Africa’s sales manager, Doros Hadjizenonos, gives his predictions for 2014:
1. Social engineering
This isn’t a new threat, but it’s showing no sign of getting old. Social engineering using targeted emails remains the primary method for launching malware and phishing attacks on businesses.
2. Internal threats
Again, not a new threat, but it’s still a huge risk – as mentioned earlier in the case of the NSA breach by a trusted insider. Senior figures at the NSA have said only 20 of its staff should have had access to the classified data that was downloaded and released by Snowden. Trust is a precious commodity, and is all too easily exploited.
3. Targeted malware campaigns
We can expect more highly sophisticated malware campaigns in 2014, aimed at stealing either money or intellectual property. And if neither can be stolen, criminals will simply extort money by hijacking or destroying data.
4. Botnet bother
Bots will continue to be a core attack technique, simply because they’re effective. Our 2013 Security Report analysed the networks of nearly 900 companies worldwide, and found 63% had bot infections. 70% of these bots communicated with their command centres every two hours. Bots are here to stay.
5. BYOD = big bills
We may be a little bored of hearing about BYOD, but it’s still a big problem. We surveyed 800 businesses globally in 2013, and 79% had a costly mobile security incident in the past 12 months. 42% said the incident cost over R1 mill, and 16% put the cost at over R5 mill.
6. Attacks on state interests and infrastructure
State-backed cybersnooping and attacks will continue on all sides of the geopolitical spectrum, targeting military, government and commercial interests.
7. Website wars
Financial institutions have been battling waves of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks over the past two years. This will spread to a wider range of public sites, aimed at causing downtime and disruption. We will also see more complex, multi-vector attacks on websites that combine DDoS with account tampering and fraud.
8. Customer data theft
Customer information is still a prize target, as the high-profile hacks which stole tens of millions of users’ credentials from Adobe, Evernote and LivingSocial shown this year. Any organisation which holds volumes of customer data is a target for hackers.
9. Smart home invasion
As the Internet of Things develops, and more IP-based household appliances are introduced (smart TVs, personal networks etc), criminals will look for weaknesses that can be exploited by hooking into these systems to gain personal information – such as your daily living patterns.
10. Anti-social media
Hijacking Twitter users’ accounts is commonplace: in April, a hacked Associated Press Twitter account issued a bogus report claiming that the White House had been bombed, causing the Dow Jones index to fall 150 points in minutes.
Hijacking will start to spread to more business-oriented social media sites, with criminals starting to hijack LinkedIn accounts to help them profile or phish other users to mount attacks.
Although these 10 threat predictions seem bleak, security protections against threats continue to evolve, too, Hadjizenonos said.
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