Venezuela's ongoing political and economic crisis has prompted not only fighting, but now, according to reports, a hacktivist group associated with the rebels has conducted cyberattacks against sites in that country. Most, but not all, of the affected services belong to the Venezuelan state. The group claiming responsibility calls itself "the Binary Guardians."

Researchers at security firm Intezer describe anti-Israeli, pro-Palestinian wiper malware "Israbye" currently circulating in the wild. It's not cryptoransomware, since it offers no prospect of file recovery until such time as Israel “disepeare” [sic]—effectively, of course, no prospect of recovery at all. It also doesn't encrypt files. Rather, it replaces their content with anti-Israel messages.

The remote-access tool KONNI has been linked to the DarkHotel threat group by Cylance, which has observed KONNI activity against North Korean targets since that country's latest rounds of missile tests. Neither KONNI nor DarkHotel have been attributed, yet. 

Such attribution is of course famously difficult. One attack, "OnionDog," thought by many to have been a targeted attack against South Korean targets, turns out, according to Trend Micro, to have been a Republic of Korea cyber drill.

Investigation into the HBO hack and extortion continues, with both Mandiant and the FBI involved.

Microsoft and Adobe issued a large number of critical patches yesterday.

Russia's President Putin, to Georgian and NATO chagrin, has visited the Russian-occupied province of Abkhazia, which may foreshadow a shift in hybrid war efforts to the Caucasus.

The FBI makes an arrest in an unusually repellent death-threat-and-cyber-extortion case.