IT security firm says 2018 will see more cyber crimes

By Ilker Girit

ISTANBUL

A U.S.-based security software giant said Wednesday next year will see more cyber-attacks worldwide.

Releasing a cybersecurity report, McAfee said 2018 will see "a significant increase" in breaches and malfeasance on the cyber world.

"During the next year, we predict an arms race," the company said in the McAfee Labs 2018 Threats Predictions Report.

McAfee said: "Adversaries will increase their use of machine learning to create attacks [...] and expand their efforts to discover and disrupt the machine learning models used by defenders."

The report claimed cyber attackers would also increase their use of these tools, "combining them in novel ways with each other and with their attack methods".

"Machine learning could help improve their social engineering -- making phishing attacks more difficult to recognize -- by harvesting and synthesizing more data than a human can," the company said.

Corporate warnings

McAfee also predicted more corporations would explore new ways to capture personal data by using connected devices which are common in people’s homes.

"As connected devices fill your house, companies will have powerful incentives to observe what you are doing in your home, and probably learn more than you want to share.

"It is more difficult to protect yourself from these issues, and the next year will see a significant increase in breaches and discoveries of corporate malfeasance," the report added.

McAfee said it was unrealistic to expect companies to give up on secretly collecting more potentially useful data on persons.

It claimed a substantial number of corporations "will break privacy laws, pay fines, and still continue such practices, thinking they can do so profitably".