Eastern Europe sees some nefarious cyber activity. Hackers claim to have pwned Serbia's state network, and with it personal information of essentially all citizens. Kaspersky reports that various Russian enterprises have been afflicted by the "Cloud Atlas" cyber espionage campaign.

In the US and UK, concerns mount over a potential Iranian threat to critical infrastructure as the FBI renews warnings to businesses and the import of Cylance's report on "Operation Cleaver" sinks in. Some observers note Iran's record of episodic cooperation with North Korea.

Whether or not North Korea will turn out to be implicated in the attack on Sony, that company's troubles continue to multiply. (IEEE Spectrum compares the situation to a digital Exxon Valdez.) More information has leaked, and soi-disant "Guardians of Peace" hackers who claim responsibility for the attack promise more — a "Christmas gift." Sony's legal response may have advanced from the "don't-sue-us-dude" to the "dude-we'll-sue-you" phase as loss of IP and production delays begin to bite. Observers draw lessons from the attack — the value of continuous monitoring and concentration of protection on essential data — and think governments in particular should take note.

Other risks are found: a worm is exploiting Shellshock to backdoor QNAP network-attached storage devices, Dyre continues to spread, Google blacklists over 100,000 websites for SoakSoak infections, and the Turla Linux version is found in Solaris boxes.

Industry news includes BAE's closure of two acquisitions and new funding for Palantir, CipherCloud, and DB Networks.

Cyber legislation seems more likely to clear the US Congress.