The turmoil of 2020 is expected to bring along many structural and strategic changes in the world of cybersecurity, according to Kaspersky.
The cyber solutions company say that in 2021, we can expect new attack vectors, such as the targeting of network appliances and the search for 5G vulnerabilities, will happen alongside multi-stage attacks and positive actions against activities enabling cyberattacks.
Here are seven targeted threat predictions for 2021:
- More countries using legal indictments as part of their cyber-strategy. Exposing toolsets of APT groups carried out at the governmental, thereby hurting actors’ activities and developments by burning the existing toolsets of their opponents in an effort to retaliate.
- More Silicon Valley companies will take action against zero-day brokers. Following the scandalous cases where zero-day vulnerabilities in popular apps were exploited for espionage on a variety of different targets, more Silicon Valley corporations are likely to take a stance against zero-day brokers in an effort to protect their customers and reputation.
- Increased targeting of network appliances. With remote work, organisational security has become a priority, and more interest in exploiting network appliances such as VPN gateways will emerge. Harvesting credentials to access corporate VPNs via ‘vishing’ remote workers may also appear.
- Demanding money “with menaces”. Changes in ransomware gangs’ strategy are leading to the consolidation of a still diverse but rather tight ransomware eco-system. Following the success of previous targeted attack strategies, more major ransomware players will start focusing their activities and obtaining APT-like capabilities – with the money the gangs have extorted they will be able to invest large funds into new advanced toolsets with budgets comparable to that of some of the state-sponsored APT groups.
- More disruptive attacks will result from a directed orchestrated attack designed to affect critical infrastructure or collateral damage—as our lives have become even more dependent on technology with a much wider attack surface than ever before.
- The emergence of 5G vulnerabilities. As adoption of this technology increases, and more devices become dependent on the connectivity it provides, attackers will have a greater incentive to look for vulnerabilities that they can exploit.
- Attackers will continue to exploit the COVID-19 pandemic. While it did not prompt changes in tactics, techniques and procedures of the threat actors, the virus has become a persistent topic of interest. As the pandemic will continue into 2021, threat actors will not stop exploiting this topic to gain a foothold in target systems.
