As if the currently known and understood threats weren't enough to be worried about, in this article, TK Keanini on DarkReading.com has presented some hypothetical - but very tangible - future security nightmares.
Legions of citizen botnet armies - Distributed Botnets aren't new and the concept of a DDOS attack being used as the 'or else' to a ransom demand is a scary prospect. DDOS attacks are still extremely difficult to defend against and organized cyber crime could yet cause problems using this as their muscle.
Crime and the sharing economy - We blogged just recently regarding Operation Deathclick and the use of malvertising hooks and the concept outlined here is an extension of the concept of collaboration between commercialized cyber criminals. We already know about Stuxnet and the Project Aurora-style APT attacks and this raises the question of what can we do if the hackers get well-organized, funded and orchestrated? Breach detection and forensic-level HIDS technology like File Integrity Monitoring, process whitelisting and sandboxing will need to be implemented and operated as an absolute necessity to counteract this level of threat.
Cybercrime-as-a-Service - Similarly, the last point extends the notion of how more effective cyber-crime could be if there was greater co-ordination of specialized resource pools to call upon. Social engineering specialists working with phishing and malware teams could provide access to any organization on demand, with password brute force and data decryption centers of excellence being called upon when needed.
Arguably, there isn't enough application of basic security best practises to combat the typical cyber security threats of today, but if any of these Halloween Nightmare Scenarios were to be executed, we would all be having sleepless nights.
Happy Halloween!
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