FireEye Mandiant has delivered its cyber landscape predictions for the coming year, including growing and affiliate-supported espionage, increased targeting of OT by ransomware, and continued targeting of healthcare.
The COVID-19 pandemic and related cyber activity has dominated 2020. This will continue into 2021 (PDF), but the techniques learned and used through this year will expand beyond COVID into the future. Cyber espionage is a good example. There have been many recent stories about espionage attacks targeting COVID vaccine research-- but FireEye Mandiant sees cyber espionage evolving and increasing across the globe.
"A lot of espionage in 2021 will be similar to what we are already seeing," Jaimie Collier, cyber threat intelligence consultant at FireEye Mandiant, told SecurityWeek. "The Big Four (Russia, China, Iran and North Korea) are not going to fundamentally change what they are doing. But China's threat apparatus has grown with regard to espionage, and we expect to see more espionage activity from China."
Collier has also seen an uptick in activity from Vietnam and South Asia in general. "We're beginning to see more activity outside of the Big Four. Some of the countries that are just now getting into the business of cyber espionage will turn to third party intruder vendors for tools and capability enhancement. We've already seen that in the Dark Basin report earlier in the year."
The reverse of espionage -- which is the seeking of secrets -- is the information operation that seeks to sow falsehoods. "While it used to be just Russia targeting the U.S., the number of parties involved is growing rapidly. Iran i ..
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