We're over a quarter of the way through the year and have been able to take stock of the various threats, large and small, that may haunt us this year. We take a look at a handful of ways that hackers, spammers and criminals plan on challenging your cybersecurity this year.
Compromised Mobile Payment Solutions
As the importance and prevalence of smartphones in our lives continues to grow vulnerabilities are sure to show themselves. Instead of taking on the considerable encryption of mobile devices, hackers have found an easier way to get at your personal information. Mobile apps have become a growing source of intrusions and data capture. This is especially true for payment and banking apps. These apps are a treasure trove for cybercriminals and they hold all manners of sensitive information; from bank account information and email contacts to account passwords. Apps such as Apple Pay, Paypal, Google Wallet and Bitcoin transaction apps are prime targets.
Spammers and Phishers Stalking the Top Level Domains
As new top level domains (TLDs) are created the opportunity for hackers and spammers to piggy back on the popularity of legitimate domains expand. For the uninitiated, TLDs are the last portion of a domain name; .com, .net, .email, .ninja are just a few examples of more than 800 possible TLDs currently available. It is estimated that this list will grow to more than 1300 TLDs over the next couple of years. By taking advantage of popular sites like Apple.com, hackers can herd unsuspecting websurfers to rigged sites with a similar legitimate sounding name, such as "shop.apple". Unbeknownst to the end user the site is loaded with a trojan, worm, or can be collecting personal metadata.
Open Source May Leave You Open to Vulnerabilities
Open Source has been a great way for developers to make a name by helping users with ever evolving code and processes. However, black hat coders and developers are using the same methods and processes to insert malicious code in Open Source applications. By the time the malicious code is activated it can be buried under dozens of iterations and thousands of lines of code. To make matters worse, the remote trigger nature of such an intrusion is difficult to estimate as it the cybercriminal can activate it weeks, months or even years in the future.
Windows is still the biggest target
It is estimated that almost half of all identified malicious code, Trojans and worms circulating on the internet specifically target the Windows OS. Since the dawn of Windows 95, Windows has become the defacto OS for the majority of at-home, commercial and enterprise users. Taking this into account, it is easy to see why direct threats to the Windows OS is really a direct threat to the general public. Sure, you may be an Apple booster or a hardcore Linux user and you may turn your nose up at the mere mention of Windows, but you know that hospital where you bring your child to be treated or the train that you need to get to work on time, chances are they run on Windows.
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