The Australian Bureau of Statistics took its census website offline last night after sustaining what it characterized as multiple distributed denial-of-service attacks. The Australian Signal Directorate has trained its eye (one of the famous Five) on the incident, and the Bureau of Statistics says it will bring the census site back once it can do so safely. Not everyone’s convinced the problems were the result of an attack—industry sources are wondering publicly if the Bureau provided enough bandwidth to handle the traffic of citizens logging on after supper to beat the reporting deadline.

Bkav reports that spyware active on Vietnamese networks since June originated from a spoofed version of a Vietnamese Communist Party website. The spyware incidents are generally believed connected to ongoing conflict between China and its neighbors over disputed territorial waters in the South China Sea.

Iran is believed to have significantly increased cyber-attack capabilities in the wake of the agreement that either limited or enabled that country’s nuclear ambitions. And exiles and dissidents are reported to be the targets of an extensive spearphishing campaign directed by the Iranian state.

AVG reports a new strain of ransomware, “Hitler,” that continues a criminal trend toward file deletion.

Google thanks Check Point for discovering QuadRooter, but says most of the risk from this Android vulnerability is already mitigated by Verify Apps and SafetyNet features. More extensive patches are expected next month.

Patch Tuesday was relatively light: Microsoft rolled out nine (five “critical”). Adobe also patched (but not Flash Player).