Now that knowledge of targeted attacks, including APT activity, has become mainstream within the broader security community, I predict that 2013 will be a year in which our assumptions will be challenged. We have already seen how successful so-called “technically unsophisticated” attacks have been over the last few years, and I predict they will continue to be so as they are designed to exploit the human factor as much as, if not more, than technology.

In his 2013 predictions, our CTO Raimund Genes predicts that there will be increasing sophistication in malware attacks, not necessarily in the technical aspects of the malware itself but in the deployment of an attack. Moreover, he believes that such attacks will increasingly have a destructive capacity and that it will be challenging to determine attribution. Building on these points, I predict the following trends for 2013:

• There will be an increasing specificity in targeted attacks, especially as knowledge of some of the noisier APT campaigns is increasingly publicized. We will see an increase in localized attacks such as malware that will not execute unless certain conditions are met, such as language settings, or “watering hole” attacks that will only affect certain geographic regions or even only specific netblocks.

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Ever wonder how those pesky pop-up ads end up on your smartphone? More importantly, do you ever consider what this seemingly harmless display of ads can do to you and your data? There are more to these ads than just taking up space and eating up your phone’s bandwidth and battery life.

This month’s Mobile Review sheds light on the overlooked organizations behind these ads, mobile ad networks. Get to know how they operate, their hidden activities, their motivations, and how they directly affect you. Though not intentionally malicious, their processes can still put mobile users at risk.

Late in November, Senior Threat Researcher Noriyaki Hayashi already gave us a concise breakdown of free app ecosystem and the part mobile ad networks play in it. This report gives an update on how these networks have adapted to further aid app developers and, in some way, protect users as well.

Also in this report is a look at mobile malware type called premium service abusers. We analyzed how they get on smartphones, how they behave, and why they are a preferred money-making scheme of cybercriminals. Compared to our midyear stats, premium services abusers remained the top mobile malware threat in November 2012, with FAKE and BOXER variants alone raking up to over 57% of our total accumulated mobile malware detections.