5. Parasitic Crimeware Takes Root While crimeware was storming ahead in recent years, parasitic malware faded to the background.In 2007, several crimeware authors turned old-school to deliver threats such as Grum, Virut, and Almanahe—parasitic viruses with a monetary mission.Overall, we expect parasitic malware to grow by 20 percent in 2008.
6. Virtual Threat Growth to Outpace Real-World Growth As virtual objects continue to appreciate in value, more attackers will look to capitalize on the situation. We see this already in the number and type of password-stealing Trojans that were classified in 2007. These crimeware have two favorite targets: online gaming and banking.
7. Virtualization Radically Changes Security Security vendors will embrace virtualization to create more resilient defenses.
8. Windows Vista Joins the Party We can expect far more than 20 Windows Vista vulnerabilities to be reported in 2008.
9. VoIP Attacks Speak Up VoIP attacks should increase by 50 percent in 2008. More than twice the number of VoIP-related vulnerabilities were reported in 2007 versus the previous year—several high-profile “vishing” attacks, and a criminal phreaking (or fraud) conviction—so it’s clear that VoIP threats have arrived and there’s no sign of a slowdown.
10. Web 2.0: Interactivity Yields More Productive Malware Web 2.0 and social networking sites will be targeted in a big way. Another cause for concern is an increase in spam that targets social networking sites. This blog spam is growing at an alarming rate.
