The Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters appear to have suspended their denial-of-service campaign against US banks. The group says it's satisfied by the disappearance of "The Innocence of Muslims" from YouTube.

Back in October the New York Times published a story about the wealth questionably accumulated by the family of China's premier. Chinese hackers (possibly under state direction or influence, possibly simply "patriotic") quickly initiated a four-month cyber campaign against the paper. Mandiant, which the Times hired to remediate the attacks, found the malware infestation largely bypassed Symantec tools the Times had relied on for protection. (Symantec points out that it's unwise to rely on signature-based defenses alone.)

Familiar bad actors return to the news. Moroccan Ghosts attack Vietnamese government sites, the Reveton Trojan introduces encryption to make it harder for ransomware victims to remove it, the architects of China's Great Firewall may have been responsible for recent GitHub attacks, and prominent American knuckleheads NullCrew give an interview in which they (sort of) explain what passes for the reasoning behind their attacks ("the system is run by rich ***holes").

Chinese Android users suffer from "Bill Shocker" malware, which induces a phone to send costly messages. Bill Shocker is likely to spread globally.

Firefox, in an effort to deflect drive-by attacks, will now default to refusing plug-ins. Cisco finds legitimate sites serving more malware than traditionally dodgy ones.

IBM introduces a big-data security tool designed to flag and stop insider threats. The FBI's pursuit of Stuxnet leakers arouses press freedom concerns.