Consumers experienced a wide range of data privacy and security threats in the third quarter of 2014 as hackers successfully conducted large-scale attacks against financial services and retail companies as well as consumers' personal online accounts and identities. 

Between July and September of this year, there were a lot of breaches reported worldwide, an increase compared to the same period last year, and millions of customer accounts and data records containing personal or financial information were either stolen or lost. Individuals also felt the data privacy pinch with breaches occurring across three major consumer activities: their banking, shopping, and online identities. 

A survey of companies in the U.K. more than half are willing to hire a hacker to help deal with a shortfall of cyber-security professionals. The finding comes from a survey of 300 senior IT and HR professionals in organizations with 500 or more staffers. 

The increasing awareness of the cyber threat means the majority of U.K. companies are clear on their strategy for dealing with any skills gaps. Rather than relying on hackers to share their secrets, or throwing money at off the shelf programs that quickly become out of date, U.K. companies need to take stock of their cyber defense capabilities and act on the gaps that are specific to their own security needs. 

Privacy has never been “an absolute right”, according to the new director of GCHQ, who has used his first public intervention to accuse US technology companies of becoming “the command and control networks of choice” for terrorists.

He said a new generation of freely available technology has helped groups like Islamic State to hide from the security services and accuses major tech firms of being “in denial”, going further than his predecessor in seeking to claim that the leaks of Edward Snowden have aided terror networks. The new director says Isis differs from its predecessors in the security of its communications, presenting an even greater challenge to the security services. 

A company that develops cyber security and information security products and services to defend organizations against cyber attacks and to protect critical assets has published a new report and introduced a list of countries most under threat from cyber attack.

APTs are complex attacks by hackers for which complicated techniques are used to sneak into a network and carry out prolonged information gathering attacks. They are often carried out by state-backed players or sophisticated criminals and have an element of human control, in contrast with some cyberattacks solely carried out by an automated piece of code. 

Minister of Justice in the UK government announced plans to introduce a more severe punishment for internet trolls who publish online offensive material or threats to other people.

Now for such offenses in the country, you can get up to six months in prison. However, the authorities intend to review the law and increase the term. New measures have caused outrage among some users. Laws to deal with internet “trolling” already exist in the UK and newly-proposed legislation makes many worried about democracy and freedom of expression Gavin Macfadyen, director of the Centre for Investigative Journalism told in his interview. 

Inventors of surveillance systems reported to authorities that it is possible to track absolutely any user who has a mobile phone, and the location of a person is not important, it doesn’t matter whether he is near or in another country.

The most famous intelligence services around the world, such as the National Security Agency of the USA and The Government Communications Headquarters of the United Kingdom use information from mobile phones for a long time. However, due to the new systems in countries that are less developed technically, it is possible to track people around the world easily. How does the system work? 

Thieves were regularly using high-tech devices to access cars with electric locks. These devices were originally intended for locksmiths to get into cars without a key, but can have devastating consequences in the wrong hands.

The gadgets are able to spoof the radio frequencies sent out by key fobs, and if they find the right one the door will simply open. Sky said that it is possible to hack any of 50 low-powered computers in a modern car in less than 10 seconds. Here's a paper looking at how the attacks work, and what can be done. There are also various videos online which apparently show how to hack key fobs. Underneath one video a commenter asks, tongue in cheek, "do they have the frequencies for Lamborghinis?"

As WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange marks his 777th day in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, the Metropolitan Police has spent over $11.8 million on guarding the embassy.

Assange has been detained without charge for 1,337 days – and 777 of those days have been spent in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, according to the latest WikiLeaks statement. Meanwhile, the price tag for guarding Assange hit over seven million British pounds (US$11.8 million) early on Wednesday, according to govwaste.co.uk counter. Officers have been staking out the embassy around the clock since June 2012, with the cost to the London taxpayers surpassing $15,000 per day. 

House of Lords committee condemns regulations being drawn up by European commission and recent ECJ ruling.

A "right to be forgotten" – enforcing the removal of online material – is wrong in principle and unworkable in practice, a parliamentary committee has said. The House of Lords home affairs, health and education EU sub-committee has condemned regulations being drawn up by the European commission and a recent landmark judgment by the European court of justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg. The study supports the coalition government's opposition to the EU proposals on the grounds that search engines should not be made responsible for the content of the internet. 

The secretive British spy agency GCHQ has developed covert tools to seed the internet with false information, including the ability to manipulate the results of online polls, artificially inflate pageview counts on web sites, “amplif[y]” sanctioned messages on YouTube, and censor video content judged to be “extremist.”

The capabilities, detailed in documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, even include an old standby for pre-adolescent prank callers everywhere: A way to connect two unsuspecting phone users together in a call. The tools were created by GCHQ’s Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG), and constitute some of the most startling methods of propaganda and internet deception contained within the Snowden archive.