Apple's iPhone will be a "primary target" for cybercriminals in 2008, a security company predicted today.

Arbor Network's Security and Engineering Response Team (ASERT) forecast that the iPhone will become "the victim of a serious attack" in 2008. According to the firm, these assaults are likely to be in the form of drive-by attacks – malware embedded into seemingly harmless information, images or other media that actually perform dangerous actions when rendered on the iPhone's web browser.

With the scrutiny the iPhone has received since its launch earlier this year over network lock-in, Arbor believes that hackers will be enticed by the possibility of attacking Apple users and the opportunity to "be the first" to hack a new platform.

The company also predicted a rise in "Chinese on Chinese" cybercrime. In the past year the team has seen a dramatic increase in the attention paid to Chinese-language specific software such as QQ Messenger and a number of malware samples focused on stealing users' credentials. Arbor expects this trend to multiply in 2008 as more Chinese users come online, more software is written for the market and Chinese cybercriminals become increasingly more sophisticated and organised.

"2007 was the year of the browser exploit, the data breach, spyware and the storm worm. We expect 2008 to be the year of the iPhone attack, the Chinese Hacker, P2P network spammers and the hijacking of the Storm botnet," said Jose Nazario, senior security engineer at Arbor Networks.