News
Symantec: Elections, Mobile Computing Among 2008 Security Threats
- By Keith Ward
- November 19, 2007
If it's time for Christmas music in Wal-Mart, it's also the season for that other time-honored tradition: year-end lists. To that end, IT security Goliath Symantec has released a
list of the biggest security stories of the year.
But what of 2008? What does Symantec predict are the trends to watch next year?
- Election Campaigns. As political
candidates increasingly turn to the Internet, it is important to
understand the associated IT security risks. These risks include, among
others, the diversion of online campaign donations; dissemination of
misinformation; fraud; phishing; and invasion of privacy.
- Bot Evolution.
Symantec expect bots to diversify and evolve in their
behavior. We may see things like phishing sites hosted by bot zombies,
for example.
- Advanced Web
Threats. As the number of available Web services increases and
as browsers continue to converge on a uniform interpretation standard
for scripting languages, such as JavaScript, Symantec expects the
number of new Web-based threats to continue to increase.
- Mobile Platforms.
Interest in mobile security has never been higher. As phones become
more complex, more interesting and more connected, Symantec expects
attackers to take advantage.
- Spam
Evolution. Symantec expects to see spam continue to evolve in
order to evade traditional blocking systems and trick users into
reading messages.
- Virtual
Worlds. Symantec expects that as the use of persistent virtual
worlds and massively multiplayer online games expands,
new threats will emerge as criminals, phishers, spammers and others
turn their attention to these new communities.