BitDefender Predicts Security Threats for 2010

BitDefender, an online security company based in Romania, published its predictions of online threats for 2010 during the 3rd week of December 2009.

BitDefender states that botnet-spewed spam would form the main malware threat during 2010.

Elaborating on this, Alexandru Catalin Cosoi, Senior anti-spam and Anti-Phishing Researcher at BitDefender, stated that competition among cyber criminals would increase regarding the use of botnets for theft of people's financial and other personal data, as reported by The Canadian Press during the 3rd week of December 2009.

Cosoi further stated that the criminals would advertise their service as the best. In fact, to prove this claim, they would bring down a website.

He also said that cyber criminals would be more discrete in withdrawing money from users' financial accounts. According to the researcher, the trend was for stealing money in bits but constantly so that the thefts attracted less people's attention.

Moreover, BitDefender predicts that in 2010, there would be a rise in the total volume of malicious programs, particularly adware. Other complicated malware too would increase such as worms spreading through multiple channels like IM, e-mail and P2P applications, and file infectors characterized with rootkit features.

According to the company, social-networking websites would become an important medium of malware contamination during 2010. More advanced cyber attacks would use web-links to target Facebook, Twitter and other social networks.

The BitDefender security experts also project that there would be more peddling of fake anti-virus programs in 2010. Consumers would be tricked into revealing their credit card details as well as into handing over their systems to others.

Besides, security attacks would also target operating systems during 2010. Microsoft's new OS, Windows 7, has been found much safer compared to the company's previous OSs. But as users adopt Windows 7 abandoning Vista and XP, malware writers are likely to hunt security flaws and breaches in the new OS. Similarly, it is advisable that Apple's Mac users too deploy anti-malware software to ward off infection.

Finally, the security firm stated that it was imperative that every computer user got dependable security software loaded.

Related article: BitDefender Releases March Malware List

» SPAMfighter News - 1/4/2010