Online Extortion And Hacker Activity Expected To Rise In 2016
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Trend Micro, a global leader in security information solutions, presents its annual security information forecast report. The expected trends include a rise in online extortion and a growth in hacker activity in the mobile field. It is also forecasted that government and corporate bodies will begin offensive information security means.
“We predict that 2016 will be a very meaningful year for both sides of the cyber crime equation,” said Raymond Genes, CTO, Trend Micro. “Governments and organizations will begin to see the advantage of foresight in the field of information security, with changes in legislation and an addition of information security personnel in the organizations. Furthermore, as users will become increasingly aware and protected from online threats, so will the attackers respond by developing sophisticated tricks that are custom made for focusing on individuals as well as corporations.”
According to the report, 2016 will also be a turning point in malwares inside ads. In the US alone, 48% of consumers use a software for blocking internet ads, and globally, an increase of 41% was registered in the past year.
As a result, advertisers will be forced to change their approach to online ads and cyber criminals will try and find other ways of accessing users’ information.
Online extortion will be accelerated using psychological analysis and social engineering of potential victims. Hackers will try and reveal more incriminating information which affects targets and makes secondary infections easier.
The report lists several trends, among which are:
- Cyber criminals will try and come up with new ways to make the attacks more personal, making 2016 the year of “online extortion”.
- Mobile malwares will reach $20 million, mostly by chinese attacks. Such attacks will aim mostly for means of payment via mobile.
- As daily uses of smart end products increases, it is expected that security failures of at least one mobile device will have fatal results in 2016.
- Hackers will radicalize their attacks to the point of using breaches in notable targets for their destruction.
- Despite the urgent need, less than 50% of organizations will hire cyber and information security experts in their teams by the end of 2016.
- A growing use in ad blocker will force hackers to develops new ways of attack, lowering the number of attacks in online ads.
- Legislation will increase as a global protection model, allowing more arrests, lawsuits and convictions.
“Hackers evolve all the time in order to adapt their attacks to their surroundings. As online awareness grows, the extortion activity also grows,” said Tom Kellerman, VP Cyber Security at Trend Micro. “Despite growth of cyber defense budgets and various legislation activities, these changes will bring about new, more sophisticated attacks.”
