The excitement surrounding Apple will lead to its widespread adoption by users and will inevitably attract many cybercriminals.
Cybercriminals are becoming more and more confident. Until recently, they used to attack banking users, considering them the weakest link in the security chain. However, in 2015, Kaspersky Lab experts expect high-risk, targeted cyberattacks on banks themselves. And the fraudsters will not stop there, as they are expected to play hardball and try to develop new malicious programs that can extract money directly from ATMs.
In addition to developments in online financial crime, 2015 is also likely to see more concerns about privacy and security of Apple devices. Malware designed for OSX is being distributed via torrents and pirated software bundles.
The research and analysis team at Kaspersky Lab expects criminals to seize every opportunity to exploit payment systems. These fears may also extend to the new Apple Pay system, which uses NFC (Near Field Communications) technology to manage wireless transactions from consumers. This is a mature market for security research and warnings about vulnerabilities in Apple Pay, virtual wallets and other virtual payment systems are expected to appear.
«Enthusiasm around Apple Pay (digital wallet) will lead to its widespread adoption by users and inevitably will also attract many digital criminals, who are looking for opportunities to reap benefits from these transactions. Apple's design places greater emphasis on security (e.g., virtualized transaction data), but we are very curious to see how hackers will exploit the capabilities of this application», said Alexander Gostev, chief security expert of Kaspersky Lab.
This year, attacks were launched against ATM machines, with many incidents that law enforcement authorities rushed to address, in order to respond to this global crisis. Given that most of these systems run Windows XP and at the same time suffer from weak physical security, they are incredibly vulnerable by definition.
«In 2015, we expect further evolution of attacks against ATMs using targeted malicious techniques aimed at gaining access to the «brain» of automatic cash machines. In the next stage, we will see attackers infiltrating bank networks. Using this level of access, they will be able to control ATM machines in real time», adds Gostev.
Source: protothema.gr
