Anonymous gets unusually favorable press in normally hostile media. The hacktivist collective's "declaration of war" on ISIS is widely approved. But a few notes on the probable course this war will take in cyberspace: any success Anonymous is likely to enjoy can be expected to come in interdicting ISIS channels of information operations (like Twitter accounts and various Dark Net locations), and in some secondary consequences for ISIS command-and-control. ISIS doesn't have, or depend on, much else in the way of cyber-vulnerable infrastructure (threats to which by ISIS itself are now exercising Western SCADA-mavens). Also, note the recurrent hacktivist tendency to mistake information operations for war itself — contrast the heartbreaking carnage in Paris and Beirut with website defacements. And as difficult as it may be to credit, massacres seem to remain appealing: witness the response of Turkish soccer fans to a moment of silence for the victims of Paris.

How dependent ISIS is on the Internet for command-and-control as opposed to inspiration remains a matter of dispute. Both sides in the debate over encryption continue to weigh in (and it's striking how closely the debate parallels gun-control arguments). Some suggest metadata collection might provide actionable intelligence without the need to weaken encryption.

Elsewhere in cyberspace, old malware resurfaces. Heimdal describes how Dyreza has adapted to Microsoft Edge and Windows 10. The Conficker worm, believe it or not, is also back, turning up pre-installed in Chinese-manufactured police body-cams.

Professionalized exploit kits and extortion increasingly look like the future of cyber crime.