Ah, the holiday season. It's a wonderful time of year, ripe with the scent of roasting turkey, filled with the sounds of family gatherings, and the tell-tale reduction of work-related email traffic that occurs when many people take time-off simultaneously. And the holiday season wouldn't be complete without the great tradition of predicting events for the next year. I simply can't sit by and allow such opportunities to pass me by, so I'll throw out a couple of my own, which will likely be followed by those of a few other nCircle folks.

1. All your social networking sites are belong to us!

This may seem like a prediction that's already come true, especially in light of the recent exploit activity on MySpace, but don't let the catchy headline confuse you. I'm not predicting that social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook will be exploited. They already have, of course. I'm predicting that we'll see a more significant loss from such exploits. It's important to keep in mind the intention behind such events. We've seen exploits that aim at popularity, followed by exploits aimed at getting the user to install adware/malware. The next step in that chain of events are exploits aimed at serious data theft, e.g. credit cards, SSNs, etc. So, be wary, because last I checked (today), MySpace was still allowing users to replace navigation links with their own code.

2. Who put this spear in my bank account?

Most of us have a tumultuous hate-hate relationship with SPAM. I mean, it's nice to receive all this email from people who appear, based on the subject lines, to have a genuine interest in my health, financial well-being, and love life, but in the end they turn out to be pure (and often confusing) random solicitation. With the clear increase in SPAM in the last few months, I think we're at a breaking point. There will be progress, significant progress, in fighting random SPAM in 2007, *but* it will be accompanied by an increase in targeting phishing attacks, aka spear phishing. It's true, Time's person of the year is you, and that makes you a pretty big target.

There you have it. I feel better just having gotten these things off my chest.