The planet has made its trip around the sun and as this year closes out, it is imperative to look ahead and think about the risks ahaed. The world is closing in on the next decade of innovation that would see an increase in biometric hacking, phishing attacks and sophisticated use of artificial intelligence (AI) among other top cyber security threats. Attackers are stopping at nothing to steal identities and evade detection through innovative techniques, writes Lucas Ajanaku.
THIS year, cyber attacks and breaches of data continued to increase in both frequency and intensity. Organisations can expect more of the samein the coming year.
The following will define the year:
Biometric data theft
While several major leaks of biometric data have already occurred globally, the Middle East and Africa regions could see the first attacks in the theft and use of biometric data in 2019, according to Kaspersky Lab.
Senior Security Researcher at Kaspersky Lab, Fabio Assolini, said: “As more biometric systems for user identification and authentication are being implemented by various financial institutions in META (Middle East, Turkey and Africa), 2019 will see criminals exposing vulnerabilities in passcodes, touch ID sensors and facial recognition. While many financial organisations consider these emerging biometric-based solutions to improve security over current authentication methods, biometric data will increasingly be used to steal sensitive information.”
AI, machine learning make attacks tougher to detect
Chief Operating Officer at Telspace Systems, Manuel Corregedor, says 2019 will see more advanced exploitation of AI to carry out and conceal new exploits.
“I believe we will see an increase in attackers utilising AI and machine learning as a means to make their attacks more difficult to detect or prevent,” he said. However, AI will also change the way the industry deals with threats.
Cyber Security Specialist at Mimecast, Brian Pinnock, said AI and machine learning will play a more prominent role as the velocity and variety of attacks makes conventional approaches – such as blacklists – outdated and ill-equipped to deal with modern cyber threats.
“Organisations will realise the importance of threat intelligence and will focus on the need for an ‘intelligence function’ to identify threats,” Pinnock said.
Phishing scams to rise
As e-mail attacks grow more frequent and complex, more organisations will be left scrambling for new ways to reduce risk and better detect and remediate threats in 2019.
Pinnock says throughout next year, the most insidious development won’t be new attack types, but, rather, improved execution of existing attack types, especially those delivered via e-mail.
He said: “Phishing techniques like the use of homoglyphs, elongated URLs, legitimate certifications (green lock), and credential-harvesting sites will increase. Flawless phishes will continue to prey on the gap in human firewalls, pivoting internally around organisations and intensifying efforts to better educate all staff.”
Research Group leader for cyber defence at the Council for Industrial and Scientific Research (CSIR), Dr Jabu Mtsweni said phishing scams are still quite popular as cyber security awareness remains low.
“Denial-of-service attacks on government Web sites were also popular in 2018. This includes injection of malware on government Web sites that remain undetected. In 2019, malicious e-mail and links will continue to be used by criminals to get access to organisations’ networks.”
Fake videos, era of fake news
UK-based innovation foundation Nesta forecasts that 2019 will see a new level of malicious posts on social media as fake videos set the next stage in fake news.
Lifelike computer-generated graphics – appearing to show video footage of events that never really happened – will be used to mislead the public.
“We predict that within the next 12 months, the world will see the release of highly authentic-looking malicious fake videos, which could cause substantial damage to diplomatic relations between countries. Deepfakes, a new AI-based technology that makes it possible to create fake videos of individuals nearly indistinguishable from the real thing, will make this possible,” Nesta said.
The innovation foundation believes that Deepfakes have the potential to spark a geo-political incident if a politician or celebrity is maliciously impersonated.
Improved existing attack types
In 2018, cyber attacks and data breaches continued to increase in both frequency and intensity, and organisations can expect more of the same in 2019, according to experts.
Corregedor said the biggest cyber security event of 2018 is probably just the sheer number of data breaches that have occurred across industry sectors, some utilising advanced attacks, others as a result of mistakes made by the affected organisations.
Over 4.5 billion data records were compromised worldwide in the first half of this year, according to Gemalto’s latest Breach Level Index.
Pinnock said better social engineering, increases in credential stuffing attacks, and more complicated malware with multiple stages and different form factors for transmission will make threats incredibly tricky to detect in 2019.
“With global cyber crime organisations growing in maturity and sophistication, many are now acquiring capabilities that were once the sole reserve of nation states.
“We’re likely to see these cyber criminals use stolen credentials from the past few years’ data breaches to compromise the security of even the most secure organisations. Even companies with good cyber protection have little protection against the reuse of passwords that have been collected in other breaches,” Pinnock noted.
Marginal dip in crypto currency attacks
According to Kaspersky Lab, this year saw a rise in the malicious use of crypto currency miners, with virus attacks and malicious software against crypto miners growing almost fourfold.
Kaspersky predicts that crypto currencies as a means of payment will decline further in 2019, and this trend is expected to lead to a slight decline in crypto currency threats.
“In the face of huge commissions, slow transfers, a large price for integration, and, most importantly, a small number of customers, the use of crypto currency as a method of payment has declined steadily from 2017 and will continue to decline in 2019,” Kaspersky said.
However, those crypto currency threats that do occur will be focused on mining malware, with the intervention of new players and the continuation of the use of ransomware.
“In 2018, the META region became more appealing to cyber criminals, with financial and malicious crypto mining attacks taking centre stage.
“Illegal mining of crypto currencies increased dramatically to overtake the main threat of the last few years – ransomware. We believe the reason for this is that mining is silent and causes less impact that ransomware, making it less noticeable,” Assolini noted.
Mobile, in-the-app malware
While malware that runs on the Windows operating system vastly outnumbers malware for any other platform, users of mobile devices are increasingly subject to malicious activity that pushes malware apps to their phones, tablets, or other devices running Android and iOS, according to computer network security company Sophos’ 2019 Threat Report.
For some time, malicious versions of popular apps were predominantly found on third-party app stores. These can be sketchy places, hosting pirated and/or trojaned versions of legitimate apps, notes the report.
Unusual malicious campaigns affecting the Android platform – phishing-in-the-app – can be expected in 2019, Sophos warned.
“In 2018, we discovered one way that criminals can bypass the Play Market’s source code checks was by not including anything malicious in the app itself, but rather by making an app that, in essence, is a browser window to a phishing site. The apps, in this case, were designed in tandem with the phishing site so the user had a seamless experience,” the report noted.
5G to fuel threats
A number of 5G network infrastructure deployments kicked off this year, and 2019 is expected to be a year of accelerating 5G activity. While it will take time for 5G networks and 5G-capable phones and other devices to become broadly deployed, experts predict growth will occur rapidly.
According to Symantec’s Cyber Security Predictions: 2019 and Beyond, growing 5G deployments and adoption will expand the cyber-attacks surface area.
“As a stepping stone to broad deployment of 5G cellular networks, some carriers are offering fixed 5G mobile hotspots and 5G-equipped routers for homes. Given the peak data rate of 5G networks is 10 Gbps, the shift to 5G will catalyse new operational models, new architectures, and, consequently, new vulnerabilities.
“Over time, more 5G IoT devices will connect directly to the 5G network rather than via a WiFi router. This trend will make those devices more vulnerable to direct attack,” Symantec said.
IIoT attacks increasing
Industrial IoT (IIoT) attacks through cloud infrastructure and over-reliance on AI in cyber security systems are two critical risks for enterprises in 2019, according to Forcepoint’s 2019 Cyber security Predictions Report.
The report read in part: “In 2019, attackers will break into industrial IoT devices by attacking the underlying cloud infrastructure.