Where Twitter was the enabling technology of Iran's failed Green Revolution of 2009, current dissenters are turning to Canadian-made Psiphon, a firewall-evasion app that's seen up to 700,000 downloads a day in the new year, most of them in Iran. Psiphon, developed by the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab, isn't the only tool being used to circumvent Iran's "filternet," but observers are tending to keep quiet about other tools, lest they blow the gaff to the regime. (That regime appears to be showing some internal ambivalence towards its own response to dissent.)

The large task of mitigating the speculative-execution processor vulnerabilities Spectre and Meltdown continues. Apple has addressed Spectre with a fix for iOS and macOS devices. On the whole the cooperation vendors are showing in addressing the vulnerabilities seems commendable (at least Intel thinks so) but problems applying the fixes offered are widely reported, as one would expect. Microsoft has pulled its Spectre and Meltdown fixes for AMD-based devices: that patch is reported to have bricked machines where it was applied.

Concerns continue over phishing attempts during the run-up to the Winter Olympics.

Criminals show sustained interest in cryptocurrency mining and hardware wallet pilferage as the alt-coins very high valuations persist. Chinese authorities appear to be preparing a crackdown on illicit currency mining. Miners are said have appeared in BlackBerry mobile sites.

A surge in pop-up redirect ads is troubling mobile device users. The tactic isn't new, but it's recently become very widespread, and has begun infesting top-tier websites.