U.S. helping Ukraine probe power-grid hack:
The United States says it is helping Ukraine investigate an apparent attack in December on the country's power grid.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said on January 12 it was assisting the Ukrainian authorities.
The incident on December 23 left 80,000 customers of western Ukraine's Prykarpattyaoblenegro utility without power. Some experts have described it as the first-known power outage caused by a cyberattack.
The Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) has blamed Russia for the incident, while U.S. cybersecurity firm iSight Partners linked it to a Russian hacking group known as Sandworm.
Confirmation that Russia was behind the Ukraine attack would put pressure on U.S. President Barack Obama to publicly assign the blame as he did when he identified North Korea as the culprit in a cyberattack on Sony Pictures Entertainment in 2014.
Obama later ordered sanctions on North Korea and ordered a cyber-counterattack on its web system. (Reuters)
This ends our live blogging for January 12. Be sure to check back tomorrow for our continuing coverage.
Good morning. We'll get the blog rolling today with a few of the tweets that caught our eye overnight: