Russia gets most of the attention lately, but never count out China's sophistication and verve.

Also never count out Excel as a popular target for hackers. We took a look at not one but two different methods of attack against the venerable spreadsheet software, both of which use the program's features as intended to wreak havoc. We also checked out a bug that a security research told Apple about months ago that hasn't yet gotten a fix—and hackers have taken notice. And cybersecurity pro Dan Salmon has a warning for you about Venmo: All that public data makes it child's play for a bad guy to spearphish you.

Zeynep Tufekci wrote about how the endless assault of falsehoods online has turned us all into dupes and cynics. And we looked about how the so-called Border Gateway Protocol is behind so many of the internet's more practical woes, like outages and espionage.

Lastly, you really should spend some time with this feature from our July/August issue about about a hacker who harassed girls in a small New Hampshire town—until they fought back.