Google security researchers revealed that the Russian threat actor Sandworm uploaded malicious apps to the Google Play Store in an attempt to infect Android devices with malware, WIRED says. Google tracked the campaign back from Russian attempts at false-flag operations against the 2018 Winter Olympics.

State-style information operations can find their way into click-bait commercial marketing, as a Nisos inquiry into a US news start-up and its employment of writers based in Macedonia suggests. Far left or far right, as long as concocted, inflammatory news stories drive traffic, it seems to be a win, the New York Times reports.

LinkedIn's first Moderation Report, issued yesterday, says that the business-focused social network booted some twenty-one-million fake accounts last year, and the Telegraph wonders if the sock puppets were the work of spies. (If many of them weren't, then the world's intelligence services are asleep at the switch.)

Le Monde reports that the Rouen University Hospital-Charles Nicolle was attacked with ransomware on November 18th and is still working toward recovery. The BBC says the hospital has reverted to manual backups and refused to pay the ransom.

In India, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology has opened an inquiry into the affair of the Pegasus infestation found in WhatsApp, the Business Standard reports,

Decipher points out that Internet sovereignty will do little to suppress cybercrime, but of course suppressing crime isn't really the point. To see a sovereign Internet in action, read WIRED's account of how sovereignty is being realized in Iran.