According to the forecast, we will see a decline in the number attacks using websites and applications as the vector for infection.  We can also expect fewer malicious applications masquerading as antivirus and security software due to high market saturation, decreasing profits and the vigilance of legitimate security solutions and federal enforcement agencies.

Kaspersky believes we will see a growing focus on the number of malicious applications being spread through torrent networks and other P2P sharing technologies. Android phones, hacked iPhones and Google Wave should also be heavily targeted, while Google Chrome OS isn¡¯t expected to suffer. Finally, 2010 will be a key year to see how secure new software and operating systems like Windows 7 or Snow Leopard are as more cybercriminals look for new vulnerabilities introduced by the latest upgrades.

Kaspersky Lab anticipates that security threats will continue grow in sophistication, and security firms will be challenged to keep up with infection and anti-detection technologies employed my malicious software.  While security applications will also grow in complexity to match, malicious software will continue to leapfrog antivirus software and remain somewhat immune while security software catches up.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the Kaspersky Lab forecast is the anticipation that black hat hackers will move to legitimize their activities by moving into grey scheme services: Creating partner programs to monetize spam botnets, denial of service attacks and malware without technically committing any crime.