According to the 2024 Cybersecurity Predictions from WatchGuard Technologies, next year's most prominent attacks will involve rapid-engineering malicious tricks that target large language models (LLM), “vishers” that utilize Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based voice chatbots, as well as virtual reality headset hacks and mixed (RV/RM) modern.
Furthermore, WatchGuard researchers believe that by 2024, managed service providers (MSPs) will double their adoption of unified security platforms with one strong automation component.
“Each new technological trend opens up new attack vectors for cybercriminals”, says Corey Nachreiner, director of security at WatchGuard Technologies. “In 2024, emerging threats targeting businesses and individuals will be even more intense, complicated and difficult to manage. With the continued shortage of cybersecurity skills, the need for MSPs, unified security, and automated platforms to bolster cybersecurity and protect organizations from the constantly evolving threat landscape has never been greater.”.
As top cybersecurity trends forecasts by the WatchGuard Threat Lab team for 2024 include:
- Engineering tricks against LLM: While companies are experimenting with LLM to improve operational efficiency, cybercriminals are learning to use them to carry out malicious activities and, by 2024, will be able to manipulate them to capture private data;
- MSP duplicate security services through automated platforms: Next year, more small and medium-sized companies will use MSP and MSSP. These professionals will duplicate unified security platforms with strong automation through AI and machine learning (ML) in response to growing demand and shortages of human resources;
- Increased sales of AI spear phishing tools on the dark web: Although cybercriminals can now purchase tools that send spam emails, create convincing texts automatically and search for information and links from a specific target on the Internet, these are manual and it is only possible to target one user or group at a time. In this way, by allowing the automation of procedural tasks, AI-powered tools will be bestsellers on the dark web;
- AI-based vishing will gain prominence: With the combination of deepfake audio and LLMs capable of holding conversations with targeted people, the scale and volume of vishing calls will increase substantially over the next year, and may not even require the participation of a human attacker;
- VR/MR headsets allow you to recreate user environments: (VR/MR) headsets are gaining popularity and, next year, a researcher or malicious hacker will find a technique to collect data from the sensors of these devices, aiming to recreate the environment in which users are playing;
- Unbridled use of QR codes will cause important attacks: With the widespread use of quick response (QR) codes, the next year will be marked by attacks caused by the use of QR codes that lead to malicious destinations.
