Ransomware attacks to decrease in 2017

Ransomware is expected to deflate a bit next year, but hackers won’t be resting on their laurels, that’s for sure. Instead, they might just move to dronejacking, for a "variety of criminal or hacktivist purposes".

This is according to McAfee Labs, whose new report, the McAfee Labs 2017 Threats Predictions Report, identifies 14 cyber-security trends to watch in 2017.

Based on the opinions of 31 Intel Security thought leaders, the report says we can expect a decrease in both volume and effectiveness of ransomware in the second half of 2017. Windows vulnerability exploits will also continue downwards, but infrastructure and virtualization software attacks will increase.

So will attacks against hardware and firmware. Attacks against mobile devices will be a combination of mobile device locks and credential theft, allowing attackers access to information such as credit cards. IoT malware could open up backdoors into the connected home -- backdoors which could stay undetected for years.  Also, we can expect to see hijackings of drones, or as the report puts it -- Dronejackings.

"To change the rules of the game between attackers and defenders, we need to neutralize our adversaries' greatest advantages", says Vincent Weafer, vice president of Intel Security’s McAfee Labs.

“As a new defensive technique is developed, its effectiveness increases until attackers are compelled to develop countermeasures to evade it. To overcome the designs of our adversaries, we need to go beyond understanding the threat landscape to changing the defender-attacker dynamics in six key areas: information asymmetry, making attacks more expensive, improving visibility, better identifying exploitation of legitimacy, improving protection for decentralized data, and detecting and protecting in agentless environments".

The full report can be found on this link (PDF).

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