Some of everyone's favorite hackers, hacktivists, agents, crooks, or sockpuppets (take your pick—for some reason it's still controversial) return to the cyberstage as the week comes to a close.
The ShadowBrokers, they of the Heckawi-accented, scriptwriter's broken English, take a bow and exit, not, we think, pursued by a bear (the bears have other pursuits, right Fancy?) but because they see much risk and few Bitcoins, sez they. In any case they release a bunch of alleged Equation Group weapons and say, in effect, do svidaniya, we're outta here. Wealthy Elite will miss them.
The other bow, this one an entrance, is from Guccifer 2.0, who says "I have totally no relation to the Russian government." So that settles that, eh?
Cellebrite, the mobile forensics firm that established a reputation as law enforcement's go-to shop for unlocking smartphones, confirms that it's suffered a data breach. Motherboard says the lost data include databases, customer information, and technical notes on the company's offerings.
WhatsApp suffers from a vulnerability widely but probably inaccurately characterized as a "backdoor."
More news and speculation about the Italian brother and sister accused of spying on Italian bigwigs for years with EyePyramid malware. Motives remain unclear, but may have involved insider speculation.
WordPress patches eight security issues. Google moves to key transparency and is widely applauded for it by crypto experts.
ENISA offers a report on best practices for securing connected cars.
The outgoing Obama Administration loosens restrictions on NSA's sharing of raw data with other agencies.