Bangalore: The cyber-security industry warned internet users of a drastic rise in the rate of cyber-spying and reported that the hackers would use the most advanced kind of malicious software to tap data in 2012. 2011 saw a series of data loss from security agencies, fortune 500 companies, human right organizations and few governmental organizations worldwide.

Last year saw worse internet threats like the Stuxnet worm which attacked nuclear plants in Iran. Duqu, a worm found in October 2011, which functioned in a way that was similar to Stuxnet and targeted trusted sources of digital certificates which authorized one’s connections with the server when one was connected to the internet. Independent researchers from Europe have already conducted research with the malware codes along with McAfee and Symantec labs and concluded that Duqu was an advanced version of Stuxnet .

The most recent cyber espionage incidents of the year are the RSA secure ID hack and DigiNotar. DigiNotar is a certificate authority which provides certificates for website authentication and the incident caused it to lose hundreds of digital certificates issued.

Rik Ferguson, director at Trend micro said espionage would use cutting edge technology to carry out covert operations.

As countries wrestle against cyber theft for their assets, it is believed that the count of Advanced Persistent Threat attacks will see a rise in 2012. Operation Aurora, Shady RAT, GhostNet, Night Dragon and Nitro were some examples of APT that were recently discovered.