The first hack to the metaverse could be close this 2023

The new year that will begin in a few weeks will bring new threats that have barely begun to be glimpsed in 2022, such as the hacking of the metaversesocial engineering attacks against multi-factor authentication (MFA) systems or the proliferation of vulnerabilities through artificial intelligence (AI) coding tools.

Insurers have suffered big losses since they started offering coverage options against cyber extortion, since its initial strategy of paying ransoms skyrocketed its costs. As a consequence, they have begun to pass on these higher costs to their clients and have significantly increased the technical security requirements that they demand before insuring them.

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But since certain industries are more attractive targets for cybercriminalsand insurers are aware of this, such as Healthcare, Critical Infrastructure, Finance and Managed Service Providers (MSPs), WatchGuard experts believe they will force them to comply with stricter regulations and bear higher costs.

In their forecasts for 2023, they also point out that some insurers will even adopt “approved security vendor lists”subscribing only policies for companies that use security solutions from specific providers.

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THE FIRST HACK OF THE METAVERSE

Big companies like Meta (Facebook) and ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, are investing billions in creating connected virtual worlds who believe they will become an integral part of society in the not too distant future. But the metaverse offers great potential for exploitation and social engineering.

The experts warn of the data that can already be extracted from the virtual reality viewer itself, full of cameras, infrared and depth sensors, with the ability to track the movement of the head, hands, fingers, face and eyes; to map the room, furniture, and even a house in 3D as the user moves, and also track things like their laptop keyboard.

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“We already spread a lot of our private data on the Internet through the mouse and keyboard. […]Now imagine a software that keeps a historical record of all this tracked data”. A malicious hacker could “create a virtual deepfake of your online avatar that can also move and act like you”they warn from WatchGuard.

The metaverse is understood as the next chapter of the Internet, but today it is already a goal. Cybercriminals will exploit a vulnerability in new business productivity featuressuch as remote desktop, used in the latest generation of VR/MR headsets aimed at enterprise use cases, such as Meta Quest Pro.

Source: Elcomercio

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