The Saudi Interior Ministry announced today that it has determined this summer's attack on Saudi Aramco came from "several" foreign countries. It declined to name the governments it believes are implicated, saying that the investigation is on-going. Elsewhere in the Middle East, Anonymous announces that phase two of OpIsrael has begun, with .org and .gov domains as the objective. Anonymous is also responsible for minor disruptions of the International Telecommunications Union meetings: ITU reported a two-hour degradation of its IT system performance.
November saw a major spike in Neccurs rootkit infections. Commonly delivered by the Black Hole exploit kit, Neccurs affected more than 83,000 machines last month. Black Hat Abu Dhabi saw a disturbing proof-of-concept exploit that targets widely used accounting systems, including those provided by SAP and Oracle.
Anonymous hopes to replace Wikileaks with "Tyler," a leaks release platform that went live Friday.
Foreign Policy notes the growth of intelligence services as in-house units of major corporations. These perform traditional business intelligence functions (like red-teaming and black hat proposal reviews) but they also develop political intelligence. Foreign Policy notes that corporate intelligence departments are increasingly staffed by alumni of the US Intelligence Community.
Apple show it's indeed serious about returning manufacturing to the United States: production of one existing Mac line will move from Foxconn to the US. RIM, seeking revitalization through its traditional reputation for security, introduces a new security wrinkle in BlackBerry, a black list of weak passwords.
The British Government worries about shortages in cyber-trained undergraduates.