Malware proves increasingly resistant to detection or removal. The Narilam data-annihilation malware mentioned here yesterday continues to circulate in Iranian banks—and has for two to three years. Distributed denial-of-service attacks have gotten bigger and now incorporate application-layer exploits. A Linux rootkit's features make it harder to detect, and increasingly diverse vectors take Internet users to the BlackHole exploit kit. (Greater attack sophistication leads an Imperva-University of Tel Aviv study to suggest antivirus software is, for many businesses, a waste of money.)

Israeli and Palestinian hacktivists seem, more or less, to be respecting a Gaza ceasefire. Saudi oil companies say they're under sustained, continuous cyber attack. A mass attack on Pakistani domains affects major corporations (Google, Apple, Yahoo). Insurance company Nationwide experiences a data breach—South Carolina residents are among the most affected.

Old-school security problems remain with us: shredded police documents from Nassau County (New York) used as confetti in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade are collected and pasted back together, and a classic pump-and-dump stock scam victimizes Google and ICOA with a fake acquisition announcement.

Maryland continues its push to become the US cyber center. Contractors work to sustain US Federal cyber funding: Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and SAIC are mentioned in dispatches.

The University of Tulsa's two-year cyber program does seem to be producing operators for the NSA ("the fraternity") and CIA ("the sorority"). Intelligence historians will think it's 1943, with Cyber Command cast as the OSS and Tulsa as Yale. Note Tulsa's concentration on offensive skills.