F-Secure's online threat predictions for 2010

Windows 7 will gain market share during 2010. Windows XP will drop below 50% market share overall. This will increase security and reduce easy attacks in affluent countries. But malware attacks will move to other countries where XP is used more.

Real time searches - now that Google and Bing have added real time seraches such as Twitter means Search Engine Optimization (SEO) attacks will also change and become more frequent. This would mean people being sent to fraud websites or websites with malware.

Social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Linkedln, etc. Facebook has now reached 350 million accounts and its growth doesn't yet show signs of slowing. This concentration of people and data is a very tempting target for cyber-criminals to exploit.

2010 FIFA World Cup (soccer for those of you in the USA) will generate a good number of related trojans, fake ticket shops, spam, online shop hacking, and DDoS attacks. There could already be SEO attacks months before the matches actually take place in June. South Africa's mobile phone networks will
be a hotbed of activity during the games.

Online gaming attacks will continue. Such sites and games are particularly popular in the Asia-Pacific region. Not enough focus is put on securing them and the problem will be further fueled by the fact that many users are younger and therefore more vulnerable to experienced cyber-criminals.

Geo location web search results leading to "location based attacks". Criminals using geo-location IP address techniques will increase. They will be localized in terms of language, current news events, and even regional banks that they target.

Mobile Internet as more people connect via the mobile networks, the amount of traffic and activity such as banking,gaming, and social networking increases in step. All these integrated social networking applications are also driving mobile phones users to be "always connected." Cyber-criminals will use social engineering to exploit this trend.

Read all of F-Secure's threat predictions