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Watchguard Technologies 2019 Security Predictions

“Cyber criminals are continuing to reshape the threat landscape as they update their tactics and escalate
their attacks against businesses, governments, and even the infrastructure of the internet itself,” said
Corey Nachreiner, chief technology officer at WatchGuard Technologies. “The Threat Lab’s 2019
predictions span from highly likely to audacious, but consistent across all eight is that there’s hope for
preventing them. Organizations of all sizes need to look ahead at what new threats might be around the
corner, prepare for evolving attacks and ensure they’re equipped with layered security defenses to meet
them head-on.”

1) Prediction: AI-Driven Chatbots Go Rogue

Description:

In 2019, cyber criminals and black hat hackers will create malicious chatbots that try to socially engineer
victims into clicking links, downloading files or sharing private information.

As artificial intelligence and machine-learning technologies have improved over the past few years,
automated chat robots have become increasingly common. Chatbots are now a useful first layer of
customer support and engagement that allow actual human support representatives to address more
complex issues.

But life-like AI chatbots also offer new attack vectors for hackers. A hijacked chatbot could misdirect
victims to nefarious links rather than legitimate ones. Attackers could also leverage web application flaws
in legitimate websites to insert a malicious chatbot into a site that doesn’t have one. For example, an
attacker could force a fake chatbot to pop up while a victim is viewing a banking website, asking if they
need help finding something. The chatbot might then recommend that the victim click on malicious links
to fake bank resources rather than real ones. Those links could allow the attacker to do anything from
installing malware to hijacking the bank’s site connection.

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