Web of Worry
by Bill Brenner

With Web 2.0 tools like Ajax all the rage and companies snapping up VoIP and virtualization technologies, security researchers are worried about what's ahead in the next decade on the security horizon.

Businesses are so eager to acquire the capabilities of these technologies that developers are churning out programs with little thought to security. As a result, the corporate world is basing huge chunks of the business on programs riddled with vulnerabilities. The underground realizes this, and is quickly coming up with ways to exploit the technology, mostly with the goal of stealing sensitive data that can be monetized.

For security researchers who have been piecing together a picture of future threats from their labs, there's little doubt that enterprises will pay a price for throwing security to the wind as the...

"There's a big rush today to take advantage of Web 2.0 applications, VoIP and virtualization," says Iván Arce, CTO of Core Security Technologies. "Because security is not a high priority in the rush to deploy, it will probably end up hurting enterprises tomorrow."

In the next two years, experts agree, companies will start to suffer the consequences of all this insecurity.

WEB 2.0 ATTACKS ABOUND
In the research lab at SecureWorks, the consensus is that exploits targeting Web 2.0 technology will be the dominant threat in the next couple of years, says senior researcher Joe Stewart.

"What I see in development are more Web-based exploits. More people are putting out these turnkey attacker kits like WebAttacker, Mpack and IcePack (see "Attack Toolkits," below), he says. "A commodity market has sprung up around these tools, and its authors are making more money as they add new features."

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