As F5 Networks puts it, “Promiscuous sharing of personal information is putting identity data at greater risk than ever”, a series of stunning cyberattacks drew headlines in 2014, and the situation will only worsen in 2015 as hackers use more advanced techniques to infiltrate networks, security researchers have revealed.
McAfee Labs’ 2015 Threats Predictions report sees increased cyber-warfare and espionage, along with new strategies from hackers to hide their tracks and steal sensitive data.
According to the report, “Cyber espionage attacks will continue to increase in frequency.
“Long-term players will become stealthier information gatherers, while newcomers will look for ways to steal money and disrupt their adversaries.”
McAfee said small nations and terror groups will become even more active and will “attack by launching crippling distributed denial of service attacks or using malware that wipes the master boot record to destroy their enemies’ networks.”
At the same time, cybercriminals will use better methods to remain hidden on a victim’s network, to carry out long-term theft of data without being detected, the researchers said.
“In this way, criminals are beginning to look and act more like sophisticated nation-state cyberespionage actors, who watch and wait to gather intelligence,” the report said.
The report also said hackers are looking to target more connected devices, including computers in the farming, manufacturing, and health care sectors.
“The number and variety of devices in the Internet of Things (IoT) family is growing exponentially. In the consumer space, they are now seen in appliances, automobiles, home automation, and even light bulbs,” McAfee said.
Meanwhile, many of the concerns relating to the theft of healthcare data arise from the increasing availability of health-tracking wearables.
In the health care hacks, McAfee said it is already seeing hackers targeting devices such as webcams with weak security and industrial control systems. But it sees health care as an especially worrisome sector.
“With the increasing proliferation of healthcare IoT devices and their use in hospitals, the threat of the loss of information contained on those devices becomes increasingly likely,” the report said.
McAfee noted that other threats will also grow, including “ransomware,” which locks down data and forces the victim to pay a ransom to retrieve it, and attacks on mobile phone operating systems.
In the retail sector, digital payments may cut the risk of credit-card skimmers, but hackers may be able to exploit wireless systems such as Bluetooth and near field communications (NFC) used for mobile payments.
“With consumers now sending payment information over a protocol with known vulnerabilities, it is highly likely that attacks on this infrastructure will emerge in 2015,” the report said.
The report comes in the wake of news about large-scale cyberattacks that have been linked to Russia or China, and a major infiltration of Sony Pictures which stole massive amounts of data.
In retail, Home Depot and others have reported data breaches affecting millions of customers.
“The year 2014 will be remembered as the year of shaken trust,” said Vincent Weafer, senior vice president at Intel-owned McAfee.
“Restoring trust in 2015 will require stronger industry collaboration, new standards for a new threat landscape, and new security postures that shrink time-to-detection.”
Still on health care hack, Keith Bird, Checkpoint’s UK MD cautions that, “As more IP-based appliances are introduced into the workplace and home environments, enabling a better-connected, more efficient world, it also gives criminals a better connected, more efficient network for launching attacks.”
WatchGuard’s Corey Nachreiner, however, took the opposite stance: “Embedded computing devices (IoT or IoE) are everywhere and have security flaws. But today’s cyber-criminals typically don’t just hack for the heck of it; they need motive. There’s not much value to having control of your watch or TV at this point.”
Whether or not fears about the IoT amount to doom-mongering at this point will only be apparent with the benefit of hindsight, but one relatively new tech trend that still represents fertile ground for hackers is mobile devices, particularly given their increased use as payment mechanisms.
Also, Alexander Gostev, Kaspersky Lab’s chief security expert, said that the increasing adoption of Apple Pay “will inevitably attract many cyber-criminals looking to reap the rewards of these transactions.”