What cybersecurity surprises does 2018 hold?
As more technological advancements are made, more opportunities for cybersecurity issues will arise. One thing is for sure, there is no problem that Adsero Security can’t solve. Read on to find out what surprises are in store for this year.
Bitcoin, the General Data Protection Regulation in Europe and the Internet of Things (IoT) are just three recent developments that will present security professionals with new challenges in 2018. That’s in addition to the usual raft of malware, DDoS attacks and database thefts that have dominated the headlines for some time.
To get a handle on what to expect, we asked two Keeper Security experts – Director of Security and Architecture Patrick Tiquet and Chief Technology Officer Craig Lurey – to peer into their crystal balls to find what 2018 holds. Here’s what they saw.
IoT
IoT has been on Patrick’s mind a lot lately, not just because it represents a vast expansion of the attack surface, but also because it opens whole new types of data to compromise. “Every aspect of your everyday life is potentially accessible to anyone anywhere in the world in seconds,” he says. “All your conversations can be accessed, captured and converted.”
Vulnerabilities have already been reported in voice-activated personal assistants, and attackers years ago figured out how to turn on smartphone microphones and cameras without the owner’s knowledge. “We will see a major IoT security disaster this year, and I think it will be bigger than the Dyn hack of 2016,” which originated with printers, security cameras, residential gateways and baby monitors,” Patrick says.
New attack vectors
New attack vectors have also been on Craig’s mind, particularly in light of recent disclosures of hardware flaws in microprocessors. “There’ll be more activity by hackers around hardware-based attacks that go after the memory of the device,” he says. Particularly concerning is that “Spectre and Meltdown took advantage of hardware flaws but were able to abstract them to the software level.” That makes them harder to stop with conventional anti-malware protections alone. Hardware vulnerabilities may demand a whole new type of protection.
