McAfee, the Santa Clara-based tech Security Company is forecasting that social media platforms, mobile devices and Apple products will be the focus of cybercriminals in 2011. According to the report, 2010 is ending with “some of the lowest” global spam levels in years, driven mainly in part because users are moving away from “slower” e-mail communications to more “immediate” methods such as instant messaging and Twitter.

With more online computing being done on smart phones, tablet computers and other portable gadgets, mobile devices will likely be eyed by cybercriminals as well, leading to an increased risk of personal and corporate data loss, McAfee said in the report.

While social media as a whole has grown in popularity over the last few years, URL-shortening services will be at the forefront of cybercrime activity, the report said. These abbreviated links make it easier to fit Twitter’s 140-character limit, they are also an easy way for criminals to mask and direct users to malicious Web sites. More than 3,000 tiny URLs are created each minute, so McAfee said it expects to see a growing number of URLs used for spam, scamming, and other malicious purposes.

Internet users are also adding geo-location information to their social media profiles to publicize where they are. Locative services such as foursquare, Gowalla, and Facebook Places, or just turning on location info on Twitter gives cyber-criminals even more information about their potential victims. It is “child’s play” to craft a targeted attack, predicted McAfee Labs. It also includes mobile devices like smart phones and the Mac operating system, which has long been considered a less attractive target than Microsoft’s far more popular Windows.

“Friendly fire”—in which threats appear to come from your friends—from social media such as Koobface and VBMania will continue to grow. This will go hand-in-hand with the increased abuse of social networks, which will eventually overtake email as a leading attack vector.

Several new mobile threats in 2010, such as rootkits for Android and the Zeus banking Trojan/botnet, hint at newer attacks and the “long anticipated” explosion up ahead, the report said. Internet-connected TVs and platforms such as Google TV, which are growing in popularity along with everything else mentioned on the list, will also become a breeding ground for cybercrimes, McAfee said. McAfee also predicts that politically motivated attacks will increase next year as groups emerge, following in WikiLeaks’ footsteps. In short, we are not in safer hands. So be prepared for any cyber attack.

Via latimes