Amid tensions over North Korea's increasingly capable missile and nuclear arsenal, reports out of South Korea indicate that someone has successfully hacked into some of Seoul's defense planning files. Agence France Presse and the Chosun Ilbo say that some 235 gigabytes of sensitive data were accessed in September of last year. They included detailed war plans to be used in the event of a North Korean attack, including plans for a decapitation strike against North Korean leadership. Some sources indicate the hackers were based in China, and there's some uncertainty as to attribution, but North Korea seems the obvious suspect to observers. Some of Pyongyang's cyber operators are known to work from China.

Facebook initially seemed uncertain that Russia had been behind some of the election-season influence operations the social media company found itself enmeshed in last year, at first pulling attribution to Russia from early versions of its report on the matter. Google is also facing renewed scrutiny over Russian ad buys.

Chinese sources deny involvement in apparent cyber attacks directed against a Chinese businessman who's been critical of alleged corruption in PRC leadership.

Palo Alto Networks reports that the OilRig threat group, prominently involved in hacking Middle Eastern targets, is back, with an enhanced set of Trojans in its toolbag.

Forrester, the market research firm, has disclosed a breach in which unauthorized parties obtained access to the company's reports.

Proofpoint warns that purveyors of Kovter malware are running a newly aggressive campaign; its apparent goal is ad fraud.