The Pentagon dismissed an attack on its social media sites Monday as “cybervandalism,” hitting back at an aggressive effort by supporters of the Islamic State to wrest control of Twitter and YouTube accounts belonging to U.S. Central Command.

This holiday season has stood out a bit from others, being the first time, at least as far as I can recall, that cyber warfare and the fictional assassination of North Korea's Supreme Leader have featured so very prominently in news and personal discussions. The Sony Pictures release of The Interview [...] has actually generated some interesting ideas about cybersecurity, information warfare, and a host of other issues.

President Barack Obama declared Friday that Sony “made a mistake” in shelving a satirical film about a plot to assassinate North Korea’s leader, and he pledged the U.S. would respond “in a place and manner and time that we choose” to the hacking attack on Sony that led to the withdrawal. The FBI blamed the hack on the North’s communist government.