McAfee Forecasts Growth in Mobile Ransomware and Security-Aware Attacks in 2014:

McAfee Labs has released its annual 2014 Predictions Report, analyzing 2013 trends to forecast the threat landscape for the coming year.

In 2014, McAfee Labs expects to see the rapidly growing mobile platform draw the lion's share of threat innovation. Ransomware is expected to proliferate on mobile devices, as virtual currencies such as Bitcoin fuel the growth of ransomware across all platforms. Attacks using advanced evasion techniques will come of age, with enhanced capabilities to identify and bypass some sandboxing and other local security measures.

Social platforms will also be used more aggressively to target the finances and personal information of consumers, and the intellectual property and trade secrets of business leaders.

"With target audiences so large, financing mechanisms so convenient, and cyber-talent so accessible, robust innovation in criminal technology and tactics will continue its surge forward in 2014," said Vincent Weafer, senior vice president of McAfee Labs. "The activity in mobile and social is representative of an increasing 'black hat' focus on the fastest growing and most digitally active consumer audiences, in which personal information is almost as attractive as banking passwords. The emergence and evolution of advanced evasion techniques represents a new enterprise security battlefront, where the hacker's deep knowledge of architectures and common security tactics enable attacks that are very hard to uncover."