The Iranian-influenced Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters failed to bring off Christmas denial-of-service attacks, but they did succeed in hitting Citigroup beginning December 26. (And of course the Cyber Fighters promise more to come.)

The Council on Foreign Relations' wasn't the only site exploited in Internet Explorer watering hole attacks: the Capstone Turbine Group was also used, and other compromised sites will probably turn up. Chinese hackers remain prime suspects. SANS's Internet Storm Center uses the attacks in an interesting case study on looking at vulnerabilities "through an attacker's eyes," and Microsoft publishes an official note on the zero-day exploit.

McAfee declared Anonymous to be in terminal decline, but Anonymous works to prove it has a lot of life left (and CSO agrees).

IT World predicts a major shift in cybercrime from the developed world to Africa, less surprising if one reflects on Africa's tendency to leapfrog technological stages, bypassing for example wired telecommunications for mobile. Sophos reports that 94% of US hospitals experienced a data breach in 2012, while only 45% saw the birth of quintuplets. (Who knew there were so many quintuplets?)

A compromise has temporarily kept the US from the "fiscal cliff," but evolving tax and budgetary policy will have profound consequences for business. RIM sells its cloud unit to focus on BlackBerry.

Scientific American runs an informative piece on SANS's "CyberCity," a material model for testing cyber effects on contemporary infrastructure.

South Korea anticipates minor rapprochement with the North (and Google executives show up in Pyongyang).