Cyber Criminals to Target Web 2.0 Technologies in 2010

Security company M86 Security has just released a paper, reporting the expected messaging-based and Web threats for the upcoming year (2010).

The company forecasts fresh threats on account of open Application Programming Interface within Web 2.0 programs. It also states that various malware attacks in 2010 would be even more sophisticated and they would adopt more-and-more different Web 2.0 technologies.

Furthermore, the company reports that the problem of botnets would remain a major hazard, pushing most of the spam and bulk attacks against websites. It points out that botnets' command-and-control mechanisms are no longer IRC-based rather they have adopted custom protocols like HTTP, while using Google, Facebook and Twitter. These botnets would become more sophisticated in 2010.

M86 Security reports that the traditional technique of online attack through scareware has become common during July-December 2009 as it demonstrates high success rate. This type of attack tricks consumers into downloading fake and harmful software after getting them to visit maliciously created anti-malware websites. It is expected that such attacks would further rise in 2010, with criminals updating their scareware pages to appear more trustworthy, and innovating methods to reach more-and-more users.

Together with these, 2010 is expected to have most of the malevolent activities through genuine websites compromised by different viruses and malicious codes. Security experts in a remark about this trend stated that hackers always preferred infecting users' computers by malware concealed in trustworthy websites to lure them to an imposter site. Consequently, the amount of malware hosted on legitimate websites was frightening.

Bradley Anstis, Vice-President of Technical Strategy at M86 Security, said that if security expert' success in thwarting cyber attacks were reviewed for 2009, the halt of the Mega-D botnet was foremost. There was huge success in removing considerable number of service providers that hosted spam. Nonetheless, according to Anstis, there was still a growing amount of Web requests and spam that obscured volumes, which existed prior to the shutdowns, as reported by SOA World on December 3, 2009.

Anstis therefore suggests "widespread user awareness" as the primary way to stop Web abuse and infection.

Related article: Cyber Child abuser Sentenced To Imprisonment

» SPAMfighter News - 12/16/2009