Rob Waugh

Wireless carriers Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile are putting customers at risk by failing to fix well-known security vulnerabilities on Android phones, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

Twitter has warned media companies that attacks on their official Twitter accounts are liable to continue, after Britain’s Guardian newspaper became the latest high-profile news site to fall victim.

Daily deals site LivingSocial has become the latest high-profile site to fall victim to hackers, after an attack accessed information for 50 million accounts last week.

The American banking system needs to prepare or further cyber attacks in the coming months, a leading financial stability group has warned.

Adrian Price, Head of Information Security at Britain's Ministry of Defence, suggested that governments should devote 20% of their budget to protecting the nation’s data - a sum worth billions more than that currently allocated in countries such as the UK itself.

Twitter is said to be testing new security systems in the wake of a false Tweet from an official Associated Press account which sent stock markets tumbling in America.

Most cyber attacks are simple and predictable, relying on basic tactics and preventable employee errors, according to Verizon’s annual Data Breach Investigations Report. The problem is made worse by the fact that companies often take months or even years to detect such breaches.

Twitter accounts used by CBS News were compromised on Saturday - and began serving up bogus news stories with links to malware.