APT Targets The Little Guy

Imperva, Inc, a provider of a new category of business security solutions for critical applications and high-value data in the datacentre, has released its December Hacker Intelligence report “Trends 2013,” which delineates Imperva’s expections regarding major trends security practitioners should watch in 2013. These trends include hackers adopting malware techniques from “state sponsored” attacks, hackers leveraging cloud infrastructure to conduct attacks and hackers targeting less-protected SMEs; underscoring the need for greater security community collaboration.

“The unfortunate reality of most technology is that it is a double-edge sword - a truth made more real in the information security industry since some techniques for protection can be easily perverted to malicious ends,” said Amichai Shulman, co-founder and CTO, Imperva. “In 2013, Imperva expects to see the sophistication of attacks increase as hackers leverage emerging technologies to execute new tactics.”

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Imperva’s “Trends 2013” notes that security should improve for larger, well-funded organisations as strategies emerge to share information in the security community, reducing the randomness of attacks. However, Imperva contends that hackers are also becoming more sophisticated, underscored by these emerging trends for 2013:

• Government Malware Goes Commercial - Citing its current research into various botnets, which indicates traditional attacks are becoming more amorphous and redundant, Imperva highlights how techniques previously reserved for allegedly “state sponsored” attacks are making their way into modern malware, blurring the line between cyber crime and cyber war.

• Black Clouds On The Horizon - Cloud computing has become a ubiquitous technology term in the past few years, but more thought needs to be given to the impact of cloud computing in cyber attacks. The elastic and resilient benefits of cloud computing, coupled with its low cost, make it an attractive platform for hackers to launch attacks. Some clever hackers have already begun to leverage cloud computing to launch attacks, but Imperva expects this trend to grow even greater in 2013.

• APT Targets The Little Guy - In 2012, Imperva saw the continuing trend of smaller businesses being hit by cyber criminals. Imperva believes this is an outcome of the industrialisation of hacking that successfully automated web application attacks. Attackers have learned to exploit and profit from compromised web applications-especially since automation can help uncover poorly protected, smaller companies. Imperva believes automation and poor protection will assist APT hackers target valuable information from smaller organisations.

• Security In Numbers - As the security industry becomes more aware of the importance of information sharing, Imperva predicts that in 2013 business and governments will create collaborative defenses by sharing individual protection data.

• Hacktivism Gets Process Driven - Hacktivism will breach first, announce second. This is a reversal from the typical order seen in 2011 and 2012.