The Georgia Tech Information Security Center (GTISC), a group of Georgia Tech faculty members from its College of Computing, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Georgia Tech Research Institute, among other university entities, is a National Center of Excellence in Information Assurance Education dedicated to researching and spreading the word about new and upcoming cyber threats.

The first annual GTISC Emerging Cyber Threats Forecast for 2008 was released earlier this month at the group's annual security summit, which featured leaders from such organizations as Google, IBM Internet Security Systems, McAfee, Symantec and the National Security Agency (NSA). Various representatives from participant companies contributed to the 2008 forecast.

"Attackers have become far more sophisticated and to maximize their chances of success, they will try to reach larger number of devices and computers via newer attack vectors that are not already widespread and well known," said Mustaque Ahamad, GTISC director.

GTISC predicts that the following five cyber threats will increase and mature in 2008:

1. Web 2.0 and Client-Side Attacks
2. Targeted Messaging Attacks
3. Botnets
4. Threats Targeting Mobile Convergence
5. Threats to RFID Systems

Monetary gain—as opposed to personal glory or notoriety—is and will continue to be the motivating factor for cybercriminals, according to GTISC.

GTISC predicts hackers will develop and execute several cyber threats over the coming year.

Web 2.0 and Client-Side Attacks
Web 2.0 technologies make online applications richer by providing functionality that boosts and enhances user interaction with Web pages—often through the use of the AJAX programming language. That means more of the code behind a page is executed on users' browsers, or on the client side, and hackers can take advantage by implanting malicious code that will be automatically executed by the browser on seemingly harmless websites.

GTISC predicts social networking sites, like MySpace or Facebook, and mashups, in which data or media from various sources and with different coding styles, are combined, will be targeted by hackers for such attacks, due in large part to their ability to draw huge numbers of users—many of whom aren't tech-savvy and are therefore vulnerable.

"Web 2.0 provides much richer functionality and enhances the end-user experience. This, however, is enabled by the ability of browsers to execute code in ways that is more sophisticated than older technologies," Ahamad said. "[We] at GTISC feel that security needs to be strengthened for Web 2.0-based applications...security professionals [need] to be aware of the potential new threats that could come with Web 2.0."