North Korea continues to see Bitcoin theft as an attractive way to redress financial shortfalls sanctions are imposing. Both Bitcoin and competitor Ethereum crashed hard at the beginning of this week as increasingly stringent regulation, particularly in Russia and China, spook speculators.

The US CIA has concluded that Ukraine was right: NotPetya attacks on the former Soviet Republic indeed were the work of Russian intelligence services. The US Senate believes it's seeing signs of Russian influence operations directed against mid-term Congressional elections: there are reports of phishing expeditions against political targets. Canadian authorities are also bracing for an expected wave of election influence operations.

There may also be an approaching consensus that two mysteries are converging: sources close to the US Intelligence Community are saying it looks as if the Shadow Brokers obtained the material they leaked via scans conducted by Kaspersky security software. (Kaspersky Lab has consistently denied any involvement in espionage or improper collusion with Russian intelligence services.)

Researchers at ICEBERG have identified a large number of malicious Chrome extensions.

A Mirai variant, "Mirai Okiru," is active in the wild. The DDoS botnet is said to be capable of targeting widely used ARC-based Internet-of-Things devices. Its signatures diverge significantly from earlier Mirai strains, which will impede detection and blocking.

The response to Meltdown and Spectre proceeds, with performance penalties that, while smaller than initially feared, remain real concerns. Enterprises receive divided counsel on whether to apply patches or adopt other approaches to defense. Mobile devices seem particularly affected.