Can we expect a cyberwar resurgence?, Abney

concerns have resulted in some countries attempting to reduce their reliance on US benevolence by
either strict internet controls (as in China) or through a “parallel internet” (as Iran has discussed).
The USA has generally stood on the side of online freedom – except where copyright is concerned – but
those pushing for change are largely seeking to restrict freedom of communication or information. Any
change away from online freedom is concerning. Whether IETF, ICANN, or the United Nations, the
internet will continue to be a space for political forces to battle. However, US adversaries will begin to
form a more coherent opposition.
5. DDoS will get sneaky: DDoS attackers will accelerate a move from simple volumetric attacks to
attacks which take advantage of a site's specific performance.
DDoS attacks that intelligently target bottlenecks in performance, such as pages with a high server load
(e.g. database writes) or specific network bottlenecks (e.g. login/session management), can magnify
impact over attacks which are volume-based or naively request the homepage of a site.
Whether naive guessing, timing analysis, or adaptive statistical analysis during the attack, these attacks
will require targets to deal with the specific part of their site that is causing problems rather than
dealing with it at a purely network level. We will begin to see the spread of tools which profile specific
targets and attack based upon certain weaknesses in configuration or implementation. Attackers will
begin to use adaptive and intelligent DoS techniques, and as a result, we will begin to see performance
impacts disproportionate with traditional DDoS, and the need for more nuanced defense strategies than
many are using currently.
6. Encryption technologies will undergo increased scrutiny: In the wake of revelations about the
ability of governments to intercept and decrypt data that was thought to be secure, encryption
technologies will be reexamined to look for weaknesses both intentional and accidental. Look for
particular attention to be paid to cryptographic block modes like CBC and OFB as well as authenticated
modes like EAX, CCM and GCM. In addition to the encryption methods themselves, look for critical
thought around key management and forward security. While it’s not likely that much will come of these
explorations, the simple fact that vast quantities of data previously considered inviolate was in fact
exposed will make the more paranoid AND the academic minded among us pay closer attention to
encryption as a whole.
7. A foreign power or organized cybercrime group will have breached a mid-sized or municipal
utility breached by for a long period: The last few years saw a great deal of attention paid to the
security of utilities as a result of Smart Meter roll-outs and highly-publicized SCADA vulnerabilities. Now
that the hype has died down, attacks will be stepped up, but in a more cautious fashion. It is widely
expected that a number of utilities have been breached over the last decade, however now that they are
being held to account by more and more government regulation, the compromised utilities will be found
and the facts will leak to the public. Mid-sized and municipal utilities tend to be chronically understaffed
and under resourced in IT departments. Without the resources available, corners are cut on both
internal and external security. This leaves high value targets like water, electrical, natural gas, and
wastewater open to easy compromise.
8. Legacy problems will escalate: Whether it's the use of substandard security, or simply systems that
were designed in a different age, legacy systems will ever-increasingly fall prey to attack.
Even when companies adopt good security and development practices old systems often linger with
their past security problems exposed to the world - securing new things is an easier sell then securing
systems due for sunset shortly.