Apple Semi FUD Ping!
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Posted on 12/08/2014 2:32:15 AM PST by Swordmaker
Cybercriminals will train their gaze on Apple more often next year.
Attacks on OS X have begun to rise, and an acceleration of those attacks is likely, SentinelOne noted, because Apple continues to grow its share of the enterprise market, where it has become a darling of executives who are ripe targets for hackers. Apple's security problems are compounded by its reputation as a "safe" platform.
Cyberspies will flourish and hackers will target Apple devices more often in 2015.
Until now, Russia, China and the United States have dominated the cyberespionage scene, but their success will start to attract new players to the practice.
"We can expect some of the developing economies -- countries forecasted for high economic growth -- to engage in these activities to protect their growth status," Carl Leonard, a senior manager at Websense Security Labs, told TechNewsWorld. "Those players have yet to be revealed."
"Cells" that will remain independent of the nation-states they're operating in will supplement those efforts, launching operations that advance the objectives of their native countries, according to Websense. That kind of activity already has been seen in Russia and China.
Russian cyberattacks on the West, as a form of retaliation for political actions taken against the Kremlin, will continue, forecast SentinelOne.
A lack of accountability within the Beijing regime will allow China's cyberespionage efforts to continue unabated, the firm also said.
Further, there will be an acceleration of cyberespionage activity by Pakistan, SentinelOne predicted, mostly directed at India. It will be outsourced, with contractors hired to write malware and orchestrate attacks.
Apple in Crosshairs
Pakistan may be in the forefront of a trend SentinelOne predicted for 2015: Attacks as a Service.
Instead of shopping here and there to gather the tools for an attack, SentinelOne explained, an attacker will be able to go to a website, choose malware, choose what to steal -- banking credentials, healthcare records, credit card numbers and such -- request a number of infections, and pay for the package.
While most cyberespionage has been directed at computer systems, cyberspies increasingly will target mobile devices, predicted Michael Shaulov, CEO of Lacoon Mobile Security.
"We're going to see more attacks that are leveraging WiFi hotspots, fake base stations or even more aggressive exploitation of mobile browsers or messaging applications," he told TechNewsWorld.
Cybercriminals will train their gaze on Apple more often next year.
Attacks on Apple's OS X desktop operating system have begun to rise, SentinelOne noted.
An acceleration of those attacks is likely, the firm said, because Apple continues to grow its share of the enterprise market, where it has become a darling of executives who are ripe targets for hackers.
Apple's security problems are compounded by its reputation as a "safe" platform, according to SentinelOne. That has resulted in the production of few products that can handle advanced threats against Apple devices.
The same is true for Apple's mobile platform, iOS.
"iOS was reasonably very safe up until recently, but over the last two to three months, cybercriminals have leveraged the apps in the platform to attack the devices," Lacoon's Shaulov said.
"That makes sense, because iOS is getting more traction in the market," he added, "and the data being placed on the iOS devices is more valuable."
Internet of Things
The Internet of Things also will become an attack surface in 2015.
Printers, smart TVs, appliances, wearable computers -- a whole host of cloud connected devices will be a new source of cyberthreats in the coming year, predicted Willy Leichter, global director of cloud security for CipherCloud.
"It's like any new technology. The standards haven't solidified. No one has looked at the underlying security," he told TechNewsWorld.
"There are also a lot of open source tools used by these devices that may have vulnerabilities," Leichter added.
Although they will leverage the IoT in 2015, hackers will be less interested in victimizing consumers than in using smart devices to target businesses, noted Websense's Leonard.
"Because these devices are Web-enabled," he said, "they give hackers an additional entry point into a business. That's what's going to intrigue the malware authors and what they'll be attacking in 2015."
Breach Diary
In actual fact, there has been NO rise in successful attacks against either Apple OS X or iOS iPhones or iPads in the last year, except for a limited exploit in China involving an unauthorized third party App Store that convinced a small number of Chinese iPhone users to actively switch their iPhones to a setting that allowed downloading of apps from a source masquerading as their trusted employer's server, as if they were receiving trusted apps from their employer. . . So that a third party App Store could sell apps instead of Apple's App Store and better than 1/3 of the apps on that store were infected with malware for the purpose of identity theft. That possibility has been closed. . . and the crooked App Store has been closed by the Chinese government. It was essentially an elaborate Trojan Horse scheme. — Swordmaker
If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.
I think the most important take away from the article is this:
"We're going to see more attacks that are leveraging WiFi hotspots, fake base stations or even more aggressive exploitation of mobile browsers or messaging applications," he told TechNewsWorld.
This is a growing problem, and people who leave their wifi on all the time are going to be most susceptible to this attack vector. Most mobile devices have wifi turned on by default and configured to connect to any available wifi hotspot. Without some basic changes to the out-of-the-box OS, the uninitiated and misinformed among us are going to inadvertently put themselves into harm's way.
I thought so too. I posted an article on FR not too long ago about faux cell towers spoofing cell phones near military bases around the country intercepting calls and passing them on into the cell system. . . but no one knows whose they are. . . and what's being done with the cell traffic that goes through those "fake" or "unaffiliated" towers.
As a HAM radio operator, I’ve designed and setup my fair share of antennae arrays, and I’ve seen some antennae around cell towers that left me dumbfounded as to their utility. Oftentimes they were outside or actually on the fence surrounding the base which is against regulations.
There is a beautiful embedded video demonstrating the golden ratio in nature. Scroll down further on the linked page.
It is a stylized Apple. Nothing more.
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