Danger of computer viruses, botnets, DDoS-attacks, breaking of email accounts and other cyber-threats can be imagined by corporate and private users. However, theseare the problems of today. The question is what awaits computer world in the nearest future and how will cybercrime develop. What kind of threats are we going to encounter next?

The questions of computer security were discussed by “Gazeta.ru” correspondent together with the participants of international students conference CyberSecurity for the Next Generation and experts in the area of cyber threats.

At the conference organized by the department of education of the “Kaspersky Labs” at Royal Holloway University of London 14 participants from 10 countries (winners of the regional competitions) presented their projects in the area of current issues of cybersecurity and their views on future of cyber crime. According to the opinion of the participants of the conference, the main cyber threat of the future will include cyberterrorism (attacks on vitally important infrastructure objects), stealing of personal data, hacking of various personal devices connected to the Internet and computer systems which are installed into homes, cars, appliances etc.

These kinds of threats indeed look very plausible. David Em, antivirus expert of the Kaspersky Lab notes that whereas in 2011 the specialists of the company have discovered 6,193 harmful programs, by 2012 this number has increased up to 44,516 which means that the increase was approximately 720%.

There is another piece of data for comparison as well. According to the last (June 2013) report produced by J’son & Partners Consulting analytical company, “Internet of things”, i.e. the number of “smart” devices connected to the web will increase from 14 billion in 2012 to 34 billion in 2020.

Such change of the entire internet ecosystem may cause the change in the very nature of cyber threats. Sergey Komarov, the head of antivirus developments and research department at Dr.Web believes that although perpetrators will be able to break in and contaminate “smart” devices, connected to the web, clear criminal “business-model” is not noticeable here.

Mr. Komarov believes that it is very difficult to make prediction in such dynamic environment as information technologies, but it is quite clear that cyber threats turn into results of commercial activities which aim to maximize their profits. Increase in the number of bank trojans and mobile threats can be predicted as well.

Sergey Novikov, head of Russian research centre of Kaspersky Lab has also outlined several directions of development of cyber threats. He also believes that we can expect increase in the number of targeted business attacks, including banking sphere and attacks on governmental bodies (cyber espionage). Moreover, the attacks will become more professional and complex.

The expert of the Kaspersky Lab believes that another tendency will be shifting of the hacker attacks and as a result the attacked devices shall include the ones that run Apple OS and Android in addition to Windows ones as well as cloud services and social networks.

The main attractiveness of attacks on cloud services and social networks lies in the fact that one successful attack can gran access to personal data of millions of users and it would not be difficult to find a buyer for this kind of data.

As for hacking of infrastructure objects, Sergey Novikov believes that despite the popularity of this topic in the media and conspiracy speculations such objects are undoubtedly attractive for professional hackers and the number of such attacks will increase.

A relatively small number of known incidents is related to the fact that neither companies nor governments of various countries try to disclose such information due to commercial and political reasons. The actual number of cases of contamination of infrastructure objects with viruses may be considerably larger than the number of cases that became known to the public.

Another topic which is directly related to both computer and offline security is personal data that is voluntarily shared online by users. It is not a secret that in addition to hacking cloud and social services, a wealth of information becomes known to perpetrators absolutely legally. Willingness to share personal information, including the private one, has become one of he the main trends of online communications and the basis of multiple social services.

Dr.Web and Kaspersky Lab experts unanimously agree that such behavior is potentially dangerous and it can cause a lot of trouble to users.

Sergey Komarov believes that there are a lot of scenarios for using information (seemingly innocent) against a person who shared it online. This includes psychological influence (trolling), blackmail, spying, etc. Sergey Novikov is convinced that modern “hyper openness” of social networks users is temporary and it occurs due to the lack of understanding about the value of such information for criminals. This is particularly true for children who creat social accounts. According to the expert of the Kaspersky Lab, this model of behavior can be changed only by means of educational programs which must become an essential part of fighting against cybercrime both for individual and corporate users.

Source: http://www.gazeta.ru/techzone/dig/r_3852210.shtml