November 14, 2012, 11:13 AM — Researchers from the Georgia Tech Information Security Center today released their official 2013 cyberthreats forecast, detailing what they say will be the most serious computer security issues in the coming year.
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THE CLOUD
First on the list -- the use of cloud computing for malicious purposes. The same flexible provisioning capabilities that let legitimate businesses quickly add or subtract computing power could be used to instantly create a powerful network of zombie machines for a wide array of nefarious purposes.
"If I'm a bad guy, and I have a zero-day exploit and the cloud provider is not up on their toes in terms of patching, the ability to exploit such a big capacity means I can do all sorts of things," Microsoft Windows Azure Distinguished Engineer Yousef Khalidi said in the report.
SUPPLY CHAIN
Globalized supply chains pose another, potentially even more serious security problem, according to the Georgia Tech researchers. The ongoing controversy over possible security flaws in products manufactured by some Chinese companies like Huawei and ZTE has businesses worried that their systems could have a built-in back door, making them vulnerable to compromise. (The researchers cite reports from Washington think tanks, as well, noting that the Chinese are concerned about the same issue where U.S.-made products are concerned.)
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It's difficult to address this problem, according to the report, given the expense and headache of constant, floor-to-ceiling monitoring -- one of the central reasons the researchers take it so seriously.
SEARCH POISONING
The danger of search engine poisoning, as well, was cited in the report as one that businesses would do well to pay attention to. While garden-variety black-hat SEO and straightforward compromises of legitimate websites are serious enough threats, the authors say that tampering with a user's search history provides a new attack vector.
