Tarot readers working for the insecurity outfit McAfee are predicting that hackers will give up trying to turn over Microsoft and focus on Adobe stuff instead.

In 2009, as attacks on client software increased, cybercriminals' favourite products were Adobe Flash and Acrobat Reader. McAfee expects that next year things will get worse with attackers exploiting vulnerabilities in Flash applications via the Web and Acrobat documents via e-mail attachments.

“We expect that in 2010 Adobe product exploitation is likely to surpass that of Microsoft Office applications in the number of desktop PCs being attacked," the report said.

On the plus side, McAfee said that 2009 marked a possible turning point in the fight against cybercrime. Coppers have got better at tracking, identifying and catching attackers, illustrated by two major crackdowns this year.

"McAfee believes that in 2010 we'll see many more successes in the pursuit of organized cybercriminals," the report states. "The cooperation among international cybercrime-fighting agencies is now tighter than ever, and the cybercrime Elliott Nesses of today have the computer and network sophistication that their predecessors could not dream of just 10 years ago," the report said.

McAfee also predicts that in 2010 social networks will become larger targets as their user bases grow. Other attack vectors will be HTML5 and Google Chrome OS as these will "blur the line" between desktop and online applications, creating more possible vulnerabilities.

Corporations, journalists and individuals will face more sophisticated trojans which could interrupt legitimate banking transactions to make unauthorised withdrawals. However botnets will decrease as cybercriminals start to wake up that they are not particularly effective any more.