Smartphones and seemingly safe sites may be more vulnerable in 2012

By: Deborah M. Todd, Pittsburgh Post Gazette

Any organization that believes it has shuttered all of the back door channels that hackers used to breach millions of systems last year should double check the locks in 2012, according to security experts.

A cyberthreat forecast by Kaspersky Lab, a Moscow-based Internet security firm, warns there is little doubt the cloud-based storage hack that took down Sony's PlayStation Network for more than a month will spread beyond gaming companies...

Tim Armstrong, a malware researcher who works out of Kaspersky's American headquarters in Woburn, Mass., said many new threats coming in 2012 are a result of hackers adjusting techniques used last year and taking advantage of fundamental flaws within systems that have yet to be addressed on an industrial scale.

"Some of these companies haven't had a security focus ever before, so the types of attacks will be a little more creative and systematic," he said.