McAfee trades in enterprise IT and consumer security wares, and as a result, has its fingers firmly on the pulse of digital threats. Not surprisingly, the company is forecasting that some of the most popular services, software and technology is in malware authors’ sights. eSecurity Planet takes a look.
New operating systems, social networking sites, and the emergence of the HTML 5 Web markup language will give hackers and malware designers even more opportunities to ply their crooked trade in 2010, according to security software vendor McAfee.
In its “2010 Threat Predictions” report (available here in PDF format), McAfee (NYSE: MFE) researchers said that Adobe’s Acrobat Reader and Flash applications will surpass Microsoft’s Office applications as the code of choice for cyber criminals next year.
“Cybercriminals have long picked on Microsoft products due to their popularity,” McAfee said in the report. “In 2010, we anticipate Adobe software, especially Acrobat Reader and Flash, will take the top spot.”
Meanwhile, social networking sites and their users can expect more of the same in 2010, with sites like Twitter and Facebook — as well as the flood of third-party applications designed for and available on those sites — will be continue to be what McAfee calls “the platform of choice” for emerging security threats.
