Rob Waugh

Basic phishing attacks and easily available tools are all that is needed to compromise many industrial control systems, the head of cybersecurity for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve has warned.

Many New Yorkers don’t place a particularly high value on their private data - from fingerprints to social security numbers - having proven willing to give away such details in return for a literal, edible cookies.

Concerns over Snapchat privacy rocketed this week after users were bombarded with spam messages written in a style which suggests that a user’s own friends think they are overweight.

This week, a serious software vulnerability, which rapidly became known as the ‘Bash Bug’ or ‘Shellshock’ dominated the headlines, as two other faked news stories showed that hoaxes can fool the world very easily these days.

Medical information is now worth up to 10 times the price of credit card details on online black markets, due to weak healthcare security and a thriving black market in data to be used for medical fraud.

Auction site eBay has remained defiant about ‘active’ listings ,containing computer code, despite multiple reports indicating that these are being used for phishing attacks.

The hit shoot ‘em up Destiny has been targeted by a cybercriminal gang thought to be behind recent attacks on game companies including Sony and Blizzard, creators of World of Warcraft.

In what appears to be a misogynist attack directed at Harry Potter actress Emma Watson, a site has appeared supposedly offering a countdown until images of her are released online.

Facial recognition is booming, with the market expected to grow from $1.92 billion to $6.5 billion in 2018 - and invading markets such as dating, with Match.com integrating a service which finds users dates based on their exes.