As French police close in on terror suspects, several French municipal Websites are defaced with the black flag of ISIS and a message praising the Charlie Hebdo massacre.

In the US, the FBI investigates media Website defacements by the self-described "CyberCaliphate."

Ukraine says the Russian government, not mere hacktivism, is to blame for attacks on German government Websites.

Attribution of the Sony hack remains as controversial as ever, at least in the judgment of the media covering the story, prompting some to conclude the attack may have been overdetermined. Researchers take a look at North Korea's Naenara browser (based on an obsolete version of Firefox and slaved to the DPRK's RedStar operating system). They find "more than a little weirdness." What's not weird, or at least not unexpected, is that Naenara seems built for censorship and decloaking.

Researchers find a Linux DDoS Trojan apparently designed to assemble a large denial-of-service botnet. Other researchers discover root command execution vulnerabilities in Asus routers.

Lookout reports that SocialPath, nominally a privacy tool, is actually a malicious data theft app.

Ars Technica publishes a look at Cryptowall 2.0's advanced evasion and obfuscation features.

Cyber criminals hunt Netflix credentials.

US officials, notably DNI Clapper and NSA Director Rogers, see the Sony hack as an inflection point. Clapper tells business to wake up to China's cyber threat; Rogers foresees a greater role for Government in defending private networks. In the UK, MI5's chief warns of terrorism and calls for more extensive Internet surveillance capabilities and authorization.