Borrowing from the ISIS playbook, al Qaeda goes online as it seeks to inspire attacks in response to the US embassy's relocation to Jerusalem.
Hacking and cybercrime show two longstanding trends: greater coordination and an increasing convergence between criminal gangs and nation-state security services.
Group-IB reports finding a Russian-speaking gang, "MoneyTaker," that's looted as much as $10 million from Russian and US banks.
Some four-hundred-sixty models of HP laptops are found to contain a keylogger pre-installed with their Synaptics Touchpad driver. Affected models include the EliteBook, ProBook, Pavilion, and Envy series. HP has issued fixes for the devices, saying that neither HP nor Synaptics has received access to customer data through the bug.
Bitcoin continues its rapid rise in value and receives commensurate criminal attention. Fortinet reports observing a phishing campaign that pretends to be marketing the Bitcoin trading application "Gunbot." Gunbot is a real, if new, trading tool, but the payload the bogus emails deliver is the malicious Orcus RAT. SANS says it's seen adult-content email contributing to the delinquency of a coin miner. And a knock-off Bitcoin wallet has made it into the Apple store.
There's nothing inherently criminal or even shady about cryptocurrencies, but any speculative bubble will draw crooks and fraudsters. One such conman, the impresario behind that PlexCoin ICO the US Securities and Exchange Commission found objectionable, has been convicted of fraud. His sentence includes both confinement and a fine.
Lots of ideas about combatting fake news circulate, but there are no obvious killer apps.