2011 may witness localised attacks, says Trend Micro survey

With the growing diversity of operating systems among companies, as well as the increasing use of mobile devices, cyber criminals may try to put a new spin on social engineering in 2011 by way of malware (malicious software) campaigns, according to 2011 threat prediction by Trend Micro, an Internet content security company.

According to Trend Micro, one of the tactics that the cyber criminals may adopt would be to bombard recipients with email that drop Trojan (virus) downloaders.

“Cloud computing and virtualisation — while offering significant benefits and cost savings — move servers outside the traditional security perimeter and expand the playing field for cyber criminals. It likewise increases the security demands on cloud service providers. We expects more proof of concept (PoC) attacks against cloud infrastructure and virtualised systems to show up in 2011,” said Amit Nath, country manager, Trend Micro India.

Already, researchers have found that more than 80% of top malware use the web to arrive on users’ systems. “Diversity of operating systems expand opportunities for cybercrime, and 2011 will bring about a growth in exploits for alternative operating systems, programs and web browsers, combined with tremendous growth in the use of application vulnerabilities,” he said.

According to the current trend, in 2011 social engineering will continue to play a big role in the propagation of threats. “We believe that in 2011 the infiltration of websites will come down. On the other hand, cyber criminals will focus on malware campaigns that promote malware via cleverly designed email messages that trick users into clicking malicious links that point to download pages. These types of campaign will speed up the proliferation process for downloader malware,” Nath said.

The report said the mid-sized companies would continue to be a target in cyber-espionage.

Cyber criminals will increasingly target security vendors’ brands in 2011, he said.