Kaspersky expects cyber criminals to pay more attention to Bitcoin in 2021, while other cyber attackers will switch to transit crypto-currencies when they ask victims to pay for their privacy. In addition, extortion practices will become even more widespread, either as part of DDoS or ransomware attacks, with the latter operators consolidating and using advanced exploits to attack their victims.
These are Kaspersky's key predictions of anticipated changes in the threat landscape in the financial sector.
Based on an analysis of what happened in 2020, Kaspersky researchers were able to prepare a forecast of major developments in the 2021 financial threat landscape to help organizations better prepare for these new threats.
Here is a summary of Kasperky's financial threat forecasts for next year:
MageCarting, or the so-called JS-skimming (the method of stealing payment card data from e-commerce platforms), the attacks will move to the server side. Evidence shows that, day by day, there are fewer and fewer actors who rely on attacks that use JavaScript and are at the client level. Kaspersky researchers expect that next year the attacks will move to the server level.
Transition coins
At the same time, the special technical capabilities for monitoring, anonymizing and confiscating Bitcoin accounts will lead to a change in the methods used by many cybercriminals to request redemption. Other currencies with a higher level of confidentiality, such as Monero, may be used as the first transition currency, with funds later converted to other crypto-currencies, including Bitcoin, to hide traces of cyber attackers.
Extortion practices will increase
Due to successful attacks and widespread media coverage this year, criminals behind targeted ransomware have systematically increased the amounts they demand of victims in exchange for publishing stolen information. Now, Kaspersky researchers anticipate an even greater increase in extortion attempts as a means of making money. Organizations that could be affected by data loss and grueling recovery processes are in the spotlight, with several cybercriminals targeting them, using ransomware or DDoS attacks, or even both.
0-day attacks used by ransomware groups
Moreover, some of these groups, which have managed to raise funds following a significant number of successful attacks in 2020, will start using 0-day practices - vulnerabilities that have not yet been found by developers - as well as N practices. -days to increase the effectiveness of their attacks. Although acquiring exploits is a costly endeavor, given the amounts that some ransomware operators have been able to obtain from their victims, there are now sufficient funds to invest in them.
Bitcoin theft will become more attractive as many nations reach the brink of poverty following the global pandemic. If economies collapse and local currencies fall, more people could be involved in cybercrime, leading to more such cases. According to Kaspersky researchers, due to the situation of local currencies, more people can focus on fraud that requires Bitcoin, as well as on the theft of Bitcoin, because it is the most widespread crypto-currency.
According to the security researcher at Kaspersky, Dmitry Bestuzhev, this year has come with drastic changes compared to any other year we have lived, and yet many trends that we anticipate will come to life last year have come true, regardless of this lifestyle transformation. These include new strategies in the area of financial cybercrime - from reselling access to bank accounts to attacking investment applications - and the continued development of existing trends, for example, an even greater spread of skimming and ransomware used to attack banks. Predictions of future threats are important because they allow us to better prepare to defend against them, and we are confident that our forecast will help many cybersecurity professionals work on their model of defending against cyber threats.
The financial predictions are part of the "Kaspersky Vertical Threat Predictions for 2021", one of the chapters in the Kaspersky Security Bulletin (KSB) - an annual series of predictions and analytical reports on key changes in the world of cybersecurity.
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