McAfee Reveals List of 2011 Top Cyber-Threats

SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS) - If you're wondering what the top cyber-threats of the new year are likely to be, McAfee researchers have come out with their 2011 Threats Prediction report.

McAfee's Director of Threat Management Sam Masiello said some very familiar names from social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Myspace are at the top of the list as well as some of the geo-location services like Gowalla, Foursquare and Facebook Places.

Also on the list are mobile phone platforms and application market places, which is no surprise according to KCBS Technology Analyst Larry Magid.

KCBS' Jeff Bell Reports:

"We're not only using our cell phones for email and web surfing, but for banking and in some cases, disclosing our locations. Naturally criminals are going to have a lot of interest in our phones," said Magid.

The McAfee list also spells out a number of very specific expected threats including those posed by URL shortening services which don't allow you to know where you're going before it's too late.

"You may be going to a perfect legitimate site like a YouTube video, or you may be going to a website that's going to try to exploit zero-day vulnerability on your computer and get you infected with malware," said Masiello.

Maciello and his McAfee Labs crew also expect to see an increase in politically- motivated "hacktivism" and warned that the Mac OS platform is likely to be a bigger attack target than it has been in the past.

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