McAfee: Hackers target Adobe, Facebook, Twitter in 2010

It's a new year and a new agenda for hackers is lurking in cyberspace. Security vendor McAfee reports that hackers will be targeting Adobe Systems' Flash and Acrobat Reader products in 2010, surpassing Microsoft Office applications. They are also paying a lot more attention to Facebook and Twitter.

"Cybercriminals have long picked on Microsoft products due to their popularity. In 2010, we anticipate Adobe software, especially Acrobat Reader and Flash, will take the top spot," McAfee said in its "2010 Threat Predictions" report.

Part of this change involves Microsoft's strategy of tightening security in its recent OS releases, forcing hackers to find fertile ground at other companies, the report said. Adobe is increasing it's efforts to deal with hacking, according to Adobe's CTO because the company is being attacked more often.

"We have absolutely seen an increase in the number of attacks around Reader, in particular, and also Flash Player to some extent," CTO Kevin Lynch told reporters at the Adobe Max conference in October. "We're working to decrease the amount of time between when we know about a problem and when we release a fix. That used to be a couple of months; now it's within two weeks for critical issues."

Mozilla's Firefox browser and Apple's QuickTime software have also faced new attacks, the report added. That's not all. McAfee predicts more sophisticated attacks next year against the popular social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

"The explosion of applications on Facebook and other services will be an ideal vector for cybercriminals, who will take advantage of friends trusting friends to click links they might otherwise treat cautiously," the company said.

Was there any good news from McAfee? Well, yes there was. The security firm predicts that law enforcement will be more successful net year in pursuing cybercriminals. Let's hope they're right.

For more on new hack attacks:
- see this Computerworld.com article

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