Pune: As the world is adopting new technologies, cyber experts of Symantec, a global leader in next-generation cyber security products and solutions, has pointed that cyber fraudsters will be looking to exploit vulnerabilities in these systems.
Cyber expert Hugh Thompson, Chief Technology Officer at Symantec, and Steve Trilling, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Security Analytics and Research, pointed that 2018 has witnessed several incidents of cyber attacks and data leaks impacting millions of people globally.
Highlighting the future trends of attackers, the experts said that attackers will exploit Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems and use it to aid assaults.
“AI has begun to materialise in recent years with AI-powered systems already in use in many areas of business operations. Even as these systems helpfully automate manual tasks and enhance decision making and other human activities, they also emerge as promising attack targets, as many AI systems are home to the massive amount of data. In addition, researchers are concerned about the susceptibility of these systems to malicious input that can corrupt their logic and affect their operations. Attackers won’t just target AI systems, they will enlist AI techniques themselves to supercharge their own criminal activities. Automated systems powered by AI could probe networks and systems searching for undiscovered vulnerabilities that could be exploited. AI could also be used to make phishing and other social engineering attacks in a sophisticated way by creating extremely realistic video and audio or well-crafted emails designed to fool targeted individuals. AI could also be used to launch realistic disinformation campaigns,” said Hugh Thompson.
Sharing an example, Hugh said, imagine a fake AI-created realistic video of a company CEO announcing a large financial loss, a major security breach or other major news. Widespread release of such a fake video could have a significant impact on the company before the true facts are understood.
Speaking on the positive side of AI in cybersecurity, Hugh said that threat identification systems already use machine learning techniques to identify entirely new threats. “Defenders can use AI to better harden their environments from attacks. For example, AI-powered systems could launch a series of simulated attacks on an enterprise network over time in the hope that an attack iteration will stumble across a vulnerability that can be closed before discovered by attackers,” added Hugh Thompson.
Another expert Steve Trilling pointed out that the growing 5G adoption will lead to an expansion in the attack surface area. “Given the peak data rate of 5G networks is 10 Gbps, compared to 4G’s 1 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 Wi-Fi router. This trend will make those devices more vulnerable to attack,” he said. Speaking on the future cyber threats, Steve said that IoT-based attacks will move beyond massive DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) assaults to new, more dangerous attacks.
“We expect to see growing numbers of attacks against IoT devices that control critical infrastructures such as power distribution and communications networks. And as home-based IoT devices become more ubiquitous, there will likely be future attempts to weaponise them, say by one nation shutting down home thermostats in an enemy state during a harsh winter,” added Steve Trilling.
The experts also pointed out that in coming future, cyber fraudsters will also try to attack and capture data in transit. “Imagine a malware inserted into a router could, to steal banking credentials, capture credit card numbers, or display spoofed malicious web pages. Such sensitive data tends to be better secured when it is at rest today. For example, e-commerce merchants do not store credit card CVV numbers, making it more difficult for attackers to steal credit cards from an e-commerce database,” added Steve.
Speaking about network attacks, Hugh Thompson said that the VPNFilter malware infected a range of routers and network-attached storage devices, allowing it to steal credentials, alter network traffic, decrypt data, and serve a launch point for other malicious activities inside targeted organisations. “We expect that attackers will continue to focus on network-based enterprise attacks in 2019, as they provide unique visibility into a victim’s operations and infrastructure. Attackers would also try to exploit the software supply chain, with attackers implanting malware into otherwise legitimate software packages at its usual distribution location. A typical attack scenario involves the attacker replacing a legitimate software update with a malicious version in order to distribute it quickly and surreptitiously to intended targets. Any user receiving the software update will automatically have their computer infected, giving the attacker a foothold in their environment. In future, we could see attempts to infect the hardware supply chain. For instance, an attacker could compromise or alter a chip or add source code to the firmware of the UEFI/BIOS before such components are shipped out to millions of computers. Such threats would be very difficult to remove, likely persisting even after an impacted computer is rebooted or the hard disk is reformatted,” added Thompson.
