Harmful Attacks Carried Out With USB Drives Will Increase From 2011 Onwards

Sunnyvale (California, US) based security firm, Narus Inc. recently listed the 10 "cyber threat trends" for 2011 and beyond, claiming that as attacks through USB becomes inexpensive and data is circulated through them at various public and private locations, the probability of computer trojans and other malicious software is increasing, as per the news by marketwire.om on January 11, 2011.

The firm cautions that they expect major well planned and sophisticated botnet attacks during the next few years. In addition, more complex targeted peer-to-peer based botnets that will be circulated with no standard command-and-control traffic would be seen.

Besides the above two kinds of attacks, the firm states that social network site users would face attack more attack. Viruses, in future, will be crafted in order to steal user's personal data, which can be further sold in black markets and utilized to access an individual's financial credentials.

Moreover, with the increases usage of smart phones for mobile emails phishing attacks will also witness a surge in them. Emails will come from banks and other companies urging users to click on attached links.

Besides the above mentioned threats, denial of service attacks such as those that affected San Francisco based Visa Inc. in the Wikileaks fiasco is one of the prime threats that can be faced by web users.

Click- jacking and cross-site scripting which is same as social network attacks can also increase. The firm stated that hackers have been using forged web pages to dupe users into disclosing password, account numbers etc.

Cloud computing expresses its worry and stated, as more data is distributed around the Internet in the so-called "cloud," chances of infection and identity related thefts will rise. Narus added that the cybercrooks will always aim at leaking the information by disguising their identity.

Further, the firm said that the advancement in the technology domain offers immense opportunities for hackers. Phones and mobile devices can be particularly attacked in denial of service attacks, and hackers will also abuse mobile banking apps and similar programs.

Lastly, Narus stated that all the countries must share information about the cybercrime and unite against fighting it.

Related article: Harmful spam increased by eight times in Q3

» SPAMfighter News - 1/21/2011