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states have launched huge distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that can take down entire
countries’ infrastructure and could certainly hamper communications systems. The U.S. government
claims foreign actors have already been targeting and probing the defenses of public utility and energy
systems. We’ve seen these nation-sponsored attacks targeting financial systems like SWIFT to steal
millions. Nation-states have also used social media and other communication systems to poison public
perception with fake news.

In summary, each of these individual types of attack are already possible. It’s just a matter of time before
some country combines many attacks as a smoke screen for a larger operation.

5) Prediction: Fileless, Self-Propagating “Vaporworms” Attack

Description:
In 2019, a new breed of fileless malware will emerge, with wormlike properties that allow it to self-
propagate through vulnerable systems and avoid detection.

It has been over 15 years since the Code Red computer worm spread through hundreds of thousands of
vulnerable Microsoft IIS web servers in an early example of a fileless worm. Since then, both worms and
fileless malware have impacted networks worldwide individually, but rarely as a combined attack.

Fileless malware, which runs entirely in memory without ever dropping a file onto the infected system,
continues to grow in popularity. Sophisticated attackers prefer this method because without a malicious
file to scan, traditional endpoint antivirus controls have a hard time detecting and blocking fileless threats.
This results in higher infection rates. Pair this with systems running unpatched and vulnerable software
that’s ripe for worm exploitation, and you have a recipe for disaster.

Last year, a hacker group known as the Shadow Brokers caused significant damage by releasing several
zero day vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows. It only took a month for attackers to add these
vulnerabilities to ransomware, leading to two of the most damaging cyber attacks to date in WannaCry
and NotPetya. This isn’t the first time that new zero day vulnerabilities in Windows fueled the proliferation
of a worm, and it won’t be the last. Next year, “vaporworms” will emerge; fileless malware that self-
propagates by exploiting vulnerabilities.

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