Cybercrime experts expect more hacks in 2015

Some big hacks made big headlines in 2014, and experts say more are bound to happen this year. They warn that hackers are getting more sophisticated and predict they’ll go after even bigger targets in 2015.

“We expect cybercrime to escalate even more than it has in the past. It’s really exponential growth that we’re seeing, both in the number of attacks but also in their sophistication,” said security researcher Patrick Nielsen.

Their prediction for 2015? That criminals will go after corporations directly looking for the big score, but that doesn’t mean it won’t affect consumers.

“It’s really clear that an attack on one organization can compromise the privacy, security, confidentiality and intimacy of hundreds of thousands of people if not millions,” said Nielsen.

One potential target: financial institutions.

“Targeting banks directly and targeting automatic teller machines, is a couple of things we’ve seen recently and we expect to see much more of in the future.”

With the growing popularity of virtual payment networks, Nielsen expects those to be a new target. He says it’s important for consumers to pay attention to security, as best they can.

“Some technologies will come out and be very secure from the beginning and may not suffer catastrophic attacks.  Others will come out without having been tested very much.”

Experts also say hackers are now going after individual users in order to find ways into corporations.

“So, for example they will send emails that look like they’re a message from my mailroom here, right? And say, we need to you verify this package is real, click this link. Once I click the link, no matter what I do after that, it’s downloaded this bad software that gets access to my computer, turns it into a zombie, whole network is infected,” said Ian Sherr, CNET Executive Editor.

So how do you protect yourself against the ever-changing attacks?

“It’s very simple things, right? The smart password, it’s about using a different password on every website, it’s about looking at the links before you click on them. The funny part is that we all sound like we’re broken records. There’s a reason: people aren’t listening, people still aren’t doing it, and that’s where a lot of these hacks are originating.”