With having the largest market share in the niche as well as a ton of bells and whistles that have chances of being exploited, there is no surprise that hackers are going to really start focusing on the iPhone this upcoming year.  On top of that, since more competition is entering the market, chances are the iPhone will come down in price as well, making it even more enticing for people to buy.  Granted, there are already proof of concept hacks for the iPhone done by security experts, but these will probably dramatically escalate in 2008… and not by security experts either.

Security predictions released today by Arbor Networks reveals that the iPhone will be a major target for cybercriminals in 2008. The forecast also highlights Chinese-specific crime as a major issue for the New Year.

Arbor’s Security and Engineering Response Team (ASERT), which has put together the forecasts, believes the iPhone will become the victim of a serious attack in 2008. These assaults are likely to be in the form of drive by attacks – malware embedded into seemingly harmless information, images or other media that actually perform dangerous actions when rendered on the iPhone’s Web browser. With the scrutiny the iPhone has received since its launch earlier this year over network lock-in, ASERT believes that hackers will be enticed by the possibility of attacking Apple users and the opportunity to “be the first” to hack a new platform.

ASERT also has predicted a rise in “Chinese on Chinese” cybercrime. In the past year, the team has seen a dramatic increase in the attention paid to Chinese language-specific software such as QQ Messenger and a number of malware samples focused on stealing users credentials. Arbor expects this trend to multiply in 2008 as more Chinese users come online, more software is written for the market and Chinese cybercriminals become increasingly more sophisticated and organized.[more]

Tags: Hackers, Mobile Security