If we want to anticipate how malware will evolve in the near future, we have to keep two things in mind: past threats and current technical developments.

“The evolution of malware-related threats is like a sine wave movement, re-infused by new technology developments,” Christiaan Beek, Lead Scientist and Senior Principal Engineer, McAfee, told Help Net Security.

“Ransomware concepts were already known in the 90s, but the invention of Bitcoin technology in 2009 added a very risky element that the industry is still battling. Worm malware is another fitting example: Conficker was a thing in 2009/2010 but went down rapidly. Now insecure IoT technologies with weak passwords and vulnerabilities have inspired the Mirai-bots and clones, and they roam the Internet and attempt to break into an IoT device nearly every 30 seconds.”