Yesterday FireEye confirmed that an Israel-based threat researcher in the company's Mandiant unit had come under a doxing attack. Some of the employee's personal accounts were compromised, apparently by hacktivists or criminals working on "Operation #LeakTheAnalyst." FireEye says the company's own systems are secure. The campaign is worrisome because individual security researchers are being targeted. 

Election security concerns fall into three broad categories: vulnerable electronic voting machines (with demonstration hacks conducted last week at Black Hat), exposure of voter databases (LookingGlass has found some forty-million US records for sale in dark web souks), and influence operations (largely Russian, and finding launching points in other countries, including the Czech Republic). The effect of influence operations, thought by some to be exaggerated, remains the subject of investigation in the US and elsewhere.

Hackers have compromised HBO. They claim to have pilfered 1.5 terabytes of data, and they've leaked a script and an episode of Game of Thrones online. The motive is unclear: it may be extortion; it may be the lulz. The hackers also claim to have obtained unreleased episodes of other shows. The incident is noteworthy in that, unlike earlier Hollywood hacks that exploited lax security at third-party vendors, HBO itself appears to have been breached.

British Home Secretary Amber Rudd is in California, working to convince Silicon Valley's tech industry that "real people" don't need strong encryption. Only terrorists do, she says, making her position in the crypto wars quite clear.

Russia has banned VPNs, and Ed Snowden's not happy.