Rob Waugh

Most five year olds can write their own name - but few have a job title to put after it. A young Xbox fan has joined an elite group of official Microsoft “security researchers” after he exposed a security flaw on Xbox’s Live Service.

Apps designed to ‘report’ on handset users’ communications while remaining undetected have increasingly become a factor in cases of domestic violence and even murder.

Malware written specifically for DVR recorders used for the output of surveillance cameras has forced some machines to mine Bitcoin - although the low-powered machines are 'very bad' miners, Wired points out.

An attack on the forums for the Boxee internet-TV service has yielded 158,000 customer passwords - and what appears to be email addresses and full messaging histories for the victims.

Samsung's Galaxy S5 offers a cutting-edge component that will change m-commerce forever - a fingerprint-scanner which offers instant authentication with one finger-swipe and which works in stores as well as online.

The Model S is rated one of the safest cars on the road - but the electronic security system protecting its locks may not be quite as bulletproof, researchers claim. The six-digit PIN used to protect its lock can be brute-forced, or phished, by attackers.

Hackers could take control of Philips ‘smart TVs’ and broadcast their own ‘shows’ to watching famlies, thanks to a ‘fixed’ password which allows nearby attackers easy access to the set’s Wi-Fi adapter.

A young MIT student has invented a new system for storing data which could offer protection against unscrupulous colleagues - and even against the hi-tech tentacles of government organizations with “back doors” into corporate servers.

For most of us, earwax is a bodily product we prefer not to think about, but a team of scientists have discovered that the substance reveals a huge amount about its creator - and could even be used to identify people.