A cyber gang calling itself the "Armada Collective" is attempting to extort a big ransom (payable in Bitcoin) from Greece's banks. If the banks pay up by Thursday, they'll be spared what the criminals describe as a crippling denial-of-service attack.

Anonymous displays either ability to multitask or inability to focus as it shifts attention from ISIS to a United Nations climate change site. (Earlier this week the target was Icelandic whaling.)

Damballa takes a look at the recently revived Darkode criminal forum and finds, basically, good news: it's not particularly well put-together or administered.

Checkpoint's list of top malware families currently hitting businesses is interesting, especially because of the familiarity of the names on it. Conficker leads, with Sality, Cutwail, Neutrino EK, and Gamarue rounding out the top five.

Researchers say that Telegram, recently in the news as ISIS's allegedly favorite messaging app, seems relatively easy to crack. "Too easy to work out who's talking to whom."

SEC Consult adds to worries about the security of the Internet-of-things: it reports finding millions of things secured by the same supposedly private (but actually not-so-private) keys.

Researchers at Perfect Privacy report that many VPNs capable of port forwarding are leaking IP addresses.

Toymaker VTech (called "scroogelike" by Dark Reading) whose Internet-connected toys encouraged children to share pictures and chats, then exposed the same, remains under scrutiny, some of it now prosecutorial.

Businesses continue to grapple with security return-on-investment and cyber value-at-risk.

Some suggest Israeli practice might usefully inform the US encryption debate.