The year 2017 was terrible for the digital world as it witnessed large-scale cyber attacks such as WannaCry (May’17) and NotPetya (June’17) on renowned firms such as NHS and Equifax. Although, the later incident was more of a data breach affecting a whopping 143 million Americans it still qualifies as a perfect example to prove that the cybercriminals are becoming sneakier and scarier.
Now to those who would like to be well-informed about the upcoming cyber threats of 2018, Cybersecurity Insiders brings out to you a list of those to help CEOs and Board members sit up and pay attention and put a plan and proactive security measures in place.
Ghostly Cryptomining- This is a new cyber threat which was witnessed in 2017 and is said to pick up next year. All these days, hackers used to target servers operating in data centers to mine digital currency. But in the upcoming year, their new targets will be individuals and their PC browsers. Yes, Cybersecurity Insiders has discovered that publishers have started monetizing their traffic by making their visitor’s mine cryptocurrencies while on their site. The plan is while a user is accessing content from a website; in exchange, the site owner will be using his/her PC browser for mining purposes. Remember, such mining techniques will cause a big impact on the productivity of your PC and will affect its lifespan on an overall note.
Trick or Treat- Well we are not speaking about the recently concluded Halloween festival’s Trick or Treat culture. We just mean the social engineering tactics which are being employed by today’s generation of hackers. Just by sitting at a computer, they are succeeding in launching phishing emails filled with nasty malware. The latest on this is a recent Necurs Botnet attack where cyber crooks were seen spreading scarab ransomware via 12.5 million emails. And in the upcoming year, security experts predict that such attacks will increase and will prove devastating to government organizations.
Hackers to go super advanced- As said in one of the earlier paragraphs; the malware developers are becoming super advanced these days and are architecting malware which goes undetected by anti-malware solutions available today. Therefore, businesses have to adequately protect themselves against the cyber threats of 2018 with a layered approach to security. They can do so by using both anti-virus solutions for traditional threats and anti-malware for the more advanced threats.
A major threat to Cloud- Cloud computing has become a boon to organizations that are looking at virtualization as the next step forward for their development. But at the same time, these virtual storage and computing platforms are also turning into a paradise for hackers. The year 2018 will witness hackers targeting loosely configured cloud storage platforms to siphon data and sell it on dark web. It is said that such data has a great demand on the dark web and so could earn excellent perks for the cyber crooks.
State-funded Attacks- Some countries with an objective to create disturbance in the political landscape of the West will try to launch attacks funded by state actors. These attacks will mostly target the critical infrastructure of government agencies and can bring in devastation to the digital world. For instance, the WannaCry cyber attack of May 2017 launched by North Korea on Europe, Canada, United States, Australia and some parts of Asia.
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