The week ends relatively quietly. The usual desultory cyber-rioting continues in South Asia as MaDleets TeaM vandalizes Pakistani government sites. A bit father east, Anonymous Cambodia ups its low game from denial-of-service attacks to leaking personal information. The most recent subjects of this unwelcome attention had their data exfiltrated from Cambodia's governmental Anti-Corruption Unit.
In Europe, Spiegel attributes Belgacom's undersea cable system hack to Britain's GCHQ, which was evidently interested in monitoring traffic in the Middle East. Separately, the Belgian Foreign Service reports it was targeted by a campaign seeking diplomatic and commercial intelligence.
The Council on Foreign Relations publishes an appreciation of Chinese state and state-linked cyber operations. It sees Chinese hackers not as "a monolithic group, but rather multiple actors with manifold motivations."
Those interested in malware obfuscation may wish to review notes about the Andromeda botnet's use of AutoIT scripts. The US FBI warns that the Beta Bot Trojan represents a continuing threat to payment systems and financial institutions.
A lockscreen hole has been found in iOS7. The bug potentially enables an attacker to access photo galleries.
The TDSS and Zero Access malware families have similar functionality but have generally been regarded as unrelated (indeed competing) toolkits. Trend Micro, however, has found them using the same domain generation algorithm module, which may indicate either convergence or common third-party users.
The US seeks to repair surveillance-frayed ties with Brazil as Brasilia pursues security-driven IT autarchy. Brookings offers an overview of national cyber security policy's complex interaction with international trade.