NetworkWorld: The future of malware

Watch out for whaling, smartphone worms, social media scams, not to mention attacks targeting your car and house

By Jeff Vance
October 03, 2011

Personal information belonging to a full third of Massachusetts residents has been compromised in one way or another, according to the state's attorney general, citing statistics gleaned from a tough new data breach reporting law.

RSA recently announced that security of its two-factor SecurID tokens could be at risk following a sophisticated cyber-attack on the company. And Sony suffered a massive breach in its video game online network that led to the theft of names, addresses and possibly credit card data belonging to 77 million user accounts. The cost to Sony and credit card issuers could hit $2 billion.

Of course, that's just a sampling of recent breaches, and if you think it's bad now, just wait. It's only going to get worse as more information gets dumped online by mischievous hacker groups like Anonymous, and as for-profit hackers widen their horizons to include smartphones and social media.

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