Targeted attacks could soar next year as increasing numbers of cyber-criminals in different geographies get their hands on the tools and techniques necessary to do the job, according to Trend Micro.
Although 2014 has seen headlines filled with tales of APTs and targeted attacks, they still don’t comprise the majority of cyber-activity in the wild.
However, that is increasingly changing, and 2015 could see even more diverse attack origins and targets including the UK, the security vendor said in its security predictions report, The Invisible Becomes Visible.
“There has never been such a wide variety of tools so easily available for cyber-criminals to use to exploit targets. Not so long ago, cybercrime required some degree of technical ability, even if it was simply employing a third party’s script,” Trend Micro CTO Raimund Genes told Infosecurity.
“Today, however, there are so many low-cost tools that require little or no knowledge to use – whether it is botnets for hire, or downloadable tools such as password sniffers, brute-force and cryptanalysis hacking programs, or routing protocols analysis. In fact, these are often downloadable as handy packages such as Cain and Abel: ‘the Swiss army knife of hacking tools’.”
Genes claimed that attackers are also attracted by the perceived ever-increasing RoI and low chance of getting caught when using these tools and covert, targeted techniques.
“It is becoming an increasingly mainstream activity, in some ways similar to the way that many people came to see torrenting as legitimate or acceptable,” he added.
With this backdrop, organizations must assume everything has already been hacked, the report claimed.
Android will remain a key target, with 2015 likely seeing the emergence of an exploit kit to take advantage of fragmentation issues in the platform, the vendor said.
Attention will also shift to cracking new mobile payment systems using NFC such as Apple Pay, the report predicted.