Intel Security Forecasts Declines in Ransomware Attacks in 2017

Ransomware attacks will decrease in volume and effectiveness in the second half of 2017, while hardware and firmware will be increasingly targeted by “sophisticated” attackers, Intel Security’s McAfee Labs reported Tuesday. Intel surveyed 31 “thought leaders." IoT malware will open back doors in connected devices that could take years to detect, Intel said. Mobile attacks will combine mobile device locks with credential theft, increasing the vulnerability of personal information stored on consumers’ devices, Intel said. Hackers will attempt “dronejackings” using laptops for criminal and “hacktivist” purposes, Intel said. Hacktivists will also likely play an important role in exposing privacy issues, Intel said. “To change the rules of the game between attackers and defenders, we need to neutralize our adversaries' greatest advantages," said Intel Security Vice President-McAfee Labs Vincent Weafer. “To overcome the designs of our adversaries, we need to go beyond understanding the threat landscape to changing the defender-attacker dynamics in six key areas: information asymmetry, making attacks more expensive, improving visibility, better identifying exploitation of legitimacy, improving protection for decentralized data, and detecting and protecting in agentless environments.”