Among those predictions are some that you may expect, including a growing trend toward cyberwar efforts, an increasing focus on mobile computing devices, hacktivism, and attacks on online currencies as well as strategies to place rogue certificates.

However, there were two predictions that stood out in particular. McAfee believes that there will be a trend of advertisers adopting techniques used by spammers. The company expects legal advertisers to be purchasing email lists, including those of companies that are going out of business. The resulting “legal” spam and “snowshoe spamming” are forecast to grow at a faster rate than illegal phishing and confidence scams, McAfee said.

2012 may also see an emergence of attacks on embedded hardware and chips that are an integral part of a larger computer system, for example in cars. McAfee said that proof-of-concept codes exploiting embedded systems will be more effective in 2012, with malware that is much more sophisticated to carry out hardware attacks and set the stage for long-term access to a system.

The security firm also noted that new security features in operating systems will force hackers to find other vulnerabilities outside the operating system. A possibility could be persistent malware in network cards, hard drives and even system BIOS (Basic Input Output System).