McAfee Predicts Rapid Evolution Of Cyberthreats In New Year

McAfee today released its annual 2013 Threat Predictions report, highlighting the top threats McAfee Labs foresees for 2013. Using its proprietary Global Threat Intelligence (GTI), the McAfee Labs team analyzed data on malware, vulnerabilities and online threats in 2012 to predict which trends will increase in 2013. In the coming year, McAfee Labs expects that threats to mobile devices will become even more of a focus of cybercriminals, the influence of the hacktivist group “Anonymous” will decline, and large-scale attacks that attempt to destroy infrastructure will increase.

“Cybercriminals and hacktivists will strengthen and evolve the techniques and tools they use to assault our privacy, bank accounts, mobile devices, businesses, organizations and homes,” said Vincent Weafer, senior vice president of McAfee Labs. “Our 2013 Threat Predictions provides the general public, governments and businesses not only with the top risks in the year to come to be aware of, but also the preventative measures that should be taken to avoid those risks from occurring. Only by understanding and preparing for threats, can we empower people to secure their information.”

McAfee Labs foresees the following trends for 2013:

Rapid Evolution and Growth in Mobile Malware

In 2012 McAfee Labs saw the number of mobile threats increase dramatically as ransomware expanded into mobile devices. The development and deployment of increasingly sophisticated ransomware technologies that will “lock up” a phone or tablet, and threaten to keep it that way until a ransom is paid, will be a prominent trend in 2013. The harsh reality of these schemes is that users have no way of knowing if their device will be unlocked even if they do meet the perpetrator’s demands. Since attackers hijack the users’ ability to access data, victims will be faced with either losing their data or paying a ransom in the hope of regaining access.

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