Cybercrime

A Microsoft survey of 10,000 consumers found that the worldwide annual cost of identity theft and phishing could be as high as $5 billion - and the cost of repairing damage to people’s reputation online could be even higher.

Less than half of parents use parental controls on internet-enabled devices bought for their children - leaving millions of youngsters potentially exposed to online threats, according to new research.

Fraudulent emails offering refunds of overpaid tax have surged by nearly 50% in the past year, according to a report by Accountancy Age. Customers reported 23,347 phishing emails to the British tax authorities in the three months before the deadline.

A small American law firm has admitted that every document on a server at the North Carolina company has fallen prey to the Cryptolocker ransomware, according to a report by local station WSO CTV.

A fake version of Facebook’s 10th anniversary celebration video page, ‘A Look Back’ is spreading via the social network, with users directed instead to another website, where they are prompted to download files.

Managers at White Lodging, a hotel management firm that works with various brands including Hilton, Marriott, Westin, Sheraton and Hyatt, may have known of a major credit card data breach for two weeks before details were made public.

A tiny, cheap gadget which can ‘hack’ into the network of modern cars to receive radio commands ranging from controlling steering and brakes to switching off headlights is to be shown off at the Black Hat Asia security conference in Singapore next month.

Weak passwords and rarely updated software are a recurring theme behind the 48,000 cyber incidents reported to the Department of Homeland Security - including the theft of data on the nation’s weakest dams by a “malicious intruder”, a DHS report has found.

Eleven high school students have been expelled after being caught bugging their teachers’ computers with a key logger device to change their grades.