Rob Waugh

The ‘magnetic stripe’ credit cards used by American banks should be replaced with the more secure chip-and-PIN systems standard in Europe and around the world to prevent further attacks, according to Visa, Mastercard, JP Morgan and government officials.

Cisco claims in its report that cybercrime is now a global, professional industry - and there is a worldwide shortage of professionals able to defend against such attacks, with new technologies in malware meaning that there is a shortfall of a million IT professionals.

The computer giant announced the change of policy in an official blog post in which it said that although XP was no longer “a supported operating system”, security updates would continue until July 2015.

Thousands of hotels have found that their listings on Google Maps and Google+ have been ‘hijacked’ - pointing instead to different sites, rather than the hotel's own. At least 4,000 sites have been affected.

Starbucks has promised to update its mobile app - the most-used mobile payment app in America - after a security researcher found that it stored passwords in plain text, leaving users vulnerable to attack.

At CES 2014, the app was king - and more importantly, the appcessory - fridges, lights, appliances and gadgets built for app control. But with companies unveiling door locks controlled via app, should we applaud - or worry?

A secret technology which relied on radio transmissions has allowed the National Security Agency to spy on computers disconnected from the internet - a security measure known as an ‘air gap’, and commonly used to protect machines containing highly sensitive data.

Computer users often feel bombarded by warnings about malware - particularly in internet browsers, which often repeatedly warn about risky sites - but tricks used by cybercriminals can help stop this, a new paper claims.

Major international cyber attacks follow a pattern - and attacks such as Stuxnet, which targeted Iran's nuclear plant can be predicted by a mathematical model, University of Michigan researchers have claimed.