In the Levant, Syria's Assad regime intensifies its malware campaigns in pursuit of survival in that country's ongoing civil war. Assad's equally reprehensible opponents in ISIS remain focused on information operations through social media, specializing in atrocity videos — that is, videos of their own atrocities.

Opponents of Israeli attacks on Hamas in Gaza deface the US State of Delaware's Treasury Division websites with anti-Israeli messages.

Dark Reading follows up on "Operation Arachnophobia," a cyber espionage campaign targeting India and attributed to Pakistan's intelligence services.

The Community Health Systems breach appears to have been accomplished through exploitation of the Heartbleed vulnerability, which prompts much comment from observers on what they take to be the lax security standards prevalent in the healthcare sector. Attribution to Chinese operators seems to be holding up, but their motives remain obscure. Some (notably CrowdStrike) take the Angletonian line that the attack is intended to dredge up personal information that can be used to compromise people into spying. Others see it as criminal moonlighting — a side benefit of working for the Chinese government.

Various corners of the security industry weigh in on the Supervalu point-of-sale breach. The emerging consensus is that it's still taking too long to discover such attacks, that PCI compliance is insufficient to security, that the breach was avoidable (Lieberman Software's eponymous Philip Lieberman thinks the CEO should be fired).

Executive and board responsibility for cyber security are much on people's minds at mid-week. Hedge funds in particular seek to evolve satisfactory cyber standards.