US Attorney General Holder says his Department is investigating the Target hack. Target describes how hackers got into its systems—stolen vendor credentials were involved. Krebs thinks a widespread backdoor in server software may also be implicated.
Social engineering of GoDaddy and PayPal appear responsible for one gentleman's loss of his famous, valuable, and much-coveted Twitter handle, "@N."
Kaspersky Labs discuss wipers, a malware genre noted for its motiveless malice and lack of rational criminal purpose.
The Register goggles at how much IKEA wants to know about customers' digital lives (more than GCHQ wants to know about HM enemies, el Reg suggests with typically endearing hyperbole).
The tension between security and trade in a globalized marketplace dominates industry news. The UK courts Brazilian tech firms (to bring jobs to Britain), and Israel works to attract investment and increase cyber exports. The US Defense Department's new procurement rules are intended to build security into acquisitions early, and suggest such measures as baselining and continuous monitoring.
But the most interesting story involves China's Lenovo, which, having added IBM's commodity server business to its portfolio, now pays Google $3B for Motorola. IBM bets on the cloud, Google on AI, Lenovo on enterprise mobility. Lenovo's acquisitions face close US regulatory scrutiny.
In what might be called "semi-active" defense, researchers debut "honey encryption"—spoofed data to gull attackers.
The US surveillance policy debate continues. Privacy advocates are somehow surprised President Obama didn't address compromised crypto in his State of the Union.
German intelligence services face surveillance litigation.