Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2023.  Read them in this 15th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.

The Identity Security threat landscape heats up

By Lavi Lazarovitz, Senior Director of Security Research at CyberArk

With 2022 behind us, this year's major cyber incidents have unveiled a glaring trend. From MFA fatigue to data exfiltration and elevated phishing schemes, Identity Security threats were the primary method of choice for this year's modern cyber criminals. The CyberArk Labs team had a front row seat to these attacks, observing the ways in which adversaries were increasingly leveraging identities-human and machine-to steal credentials and bypass access to some of today's most secure enterprises.

Reflecting on the threats and attacks we witnessed last year is critical as business leaders start making key business decisions for 2023. I have some thoughts about the new cybersecurity challenges that the next year will present, as well as how modern organizations can defend against elevated threats.

Forget New Year's diets - your cookies will be too irresistible

Attackers are getting more sophisticated in snagging session cookies - which establish access to these third-party applications - to bypass both primary authentication and MFA and hijack accounts. As organizations continue to adopt more SaaS applications and consolidate them on the browser, session cookies will become even more critical and more vulnerable. Additionally, with digital marketplaces specializing in stolen session cookies growing in popularity, threat actors will seek ways to further automate and scale these session hijacking attacks to boost profitability next year.

2023 will present a silver lining in the commoditized credential age

If I were to ever become a cyber criminal, 2023 is the year I would begin my career in cybercrime. Thanks to the commoditization of the credential, would-be attackers who lack skills can simply browse on a marketplace, fill their carts with cheap lists of stolen credentials and cookies or off-the-shelf ransomware, phishing and exploit kits and check out - no attack legwork required. In this environment, MFA and two-factor authentication won't be enough. Yet there will be a silver lining for security teams that take a defense in depth approach - one that could swing the pendulum in their favor. Rushing to get rich quick, many cybercriminals will make rookie mistakes or create far too much noise on the network, foiling their plans.

What's old will be new again as threat actors revisit familiar tricks

The next "big thing" isn't likely to be a massive zero day - especially as prices for vulnerabilities reach upwards of $10 million on darknets and other underground marketplaces. Most cyber criminals will use alternative ways to infiltrate organizations and move laterally toward their targets. And at the end of the day, why would they spend so much cash on a specialized exploit or time contriving new methods when old tricks like phishing, credential theft and social engineering, or one-day kernel-level or memory corruption exploits work just fine?

Geopolitical "Winter is Coming," along with increased attacks on critical infrastructure

As conflict in Ukraine continues (and other geopolitical tensions persist), criminal groups will ramp up financially motivated attacks and shift their gaze in decentralized infrastructure's direction. Meanwhile, as Eastern Europe enters the coldest parts of the year, we can expect attacks on critical infrastructure to increase as temperatures plummet, driving global energy prices up even higher.

As the attack surface continues to broaden and escalate as a result of geopolitical tensions, increased use of hybrid cloud environments, and the uptick in next-level attacks leveraged by modern cybercriminals, it becomes more critical to understand how the cyberspace will evolve next year-and how to best defend ourselves.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lavi Lazarovitz, Senior Director of Security Research on CyberArk's Labs team, leads a team of security researchers who do, think, write, and code cybersecurity. He researches the methods and tactics employed by hackers to penetrate and exploit organizational networks and is responsible for devising effective detection and mitigation techniques to thwart cyberattacks. The labs team, under Lavi's direction, innovate security solutions and research offensive security. Before joining CyberArk, Lavi served 11 years as a pilot and intelligence officer in the Israeli Air Force and led a professional services team of web security engineers at Fireblade.