Preparing for the new forms of cybersecurity threats in 2020
Government-scale attacks
Next to email, we have another cybersecurity threat in the form of malicious websites and mobile apps. Just like malicious emails, these attacks target platforms used Recently, U.S. officials banned an “increasingly popular app” “Throughout 2019, mobile devices have proven key avenues for cyberespionage campaigns,” said Alex Guirakhoo, a strategy and research analyst at Digital Shadows, which focuses on protecting against external threats and minimizing digital risk. “By compromising or impersonating one popular app, they can reach a broad victim audience with minimal additional effort.”
This is a pattern we witnessed with some Chinese websites. In August 2019, Google security researchers announced they had detected a number of malicious websites, which exploited several zero-day hacks, that would infiltrate the mobile phones — and as discovered later, desktop PCs — of any visitor. The websites, which had been active for a while, could break into iPhones and steal personal information, which was considered extremely rare.
Another significant event involving cybersecurity threats in 2019 was the Pegasus spyware exploiting a WhatsApp vulnerability, where hackers could infect a target Pulling off these kinds of hacks requires governmental efforts and unfortunately, there are those that are willing to pay that price. In the case of ToTok, even the popularity of the app could be an engineered effort — something single hackers are incapable of pulling off.