McAfee Labs outlines Top Threats in Its Latest Predictions

McAfee has unveiled its 2011 Threat Predictions report, outlining the top threats that researchers at McAfee Labs foresee for the coming year. The list comprises 2010's most buzzed about platforms and services, including Google's Android, Apple's iPhone, foursquare, Google TV and the Mac OS X platform, which are all expected to become major targets for cybercriminals. McAfee Labs also predicts that politically motivated attacks will be on the rise, as more groups are expected to repeat the WikiLeaks paradigm.

"We have seen significant advancements in device and social network adoption, placing a bulls-eye on the platforms and services users are embracing the most," said Vincent Weafer, Senior Vice-President, McAfee Labs. "These platforms and services have become very popular in a short amount of time, and we are already seeing a significant increase in vulnerabilities, attacks and data loss."

The use of abbreviated URLs on sites like Twitter makes it easy for cybercriminals to mask and direct users to malicious websites. With more than 3,000 shortened URLs per minute being generated, McAfee Labs expects to see a growing number used for spam, scamming and other malicious purposes. McAfee Labs also predicts that cybercriminals will increasingly use locative services such as foursquare, Gowalla and Facebook Places that can easily search, track and plot the whereabouts of friends and strangers, across the most popular social networking sites in 2011.

The popularity of iPads and iPhones in business environments, combined with the lack of user understanding of proper security for these devices, will increase the risk for data and identity exposure, and will make Apple botnets and Trojans a common occurrence, as predicted by McAfee.

McAfee Labs predicts that the recent merger of Zeus with SpyEye will produce more sophisticated bots due to improvements in bypassing security mechanisms and law enforcement monitoring. Additionally, McAfee Labs expects to see a significant botnet activity in the adoption of data-gathering and data-removal functionality, rather than the common use of sending spam

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