These Exploits Won’t Be Cute Little Capers

But back to remote work in particular. Cyber criminals have an especial affinity for this setup, and that will remain the case in 2021. In fact, says WatchGuard, malicious hackers “will exploit under-protected home networks as an avenue to access valuable corporate endpoint devices.”

Much of this will happen via worm functionality modules in the malware.

“We expect to see malware that not only spreads across networks but looks for signs that an infected device is for corporate use (such as evidence of VPN usage),” the company says.

To that parenthetical point, WatchGuard notes that it predicts attackers to “significantly” ramp up their assaults on VPN, remote desktop protocol and other remote access services.

“Using stolen credentials, exploits and good old-fashioned brute-forcing, we believe attacks against RDP, VPN and remote connection servers will double in 2021,” WatchGuard says.