The work of the Bletchley Park codebreakers is credited with shortening the Second World War by two years. But for three decades, those who worked on decrypting Nazi communications could tell no one what they had done.

Such was the secrecy in which the codebreakers operated many did not even realise the true importance of their work until Bletchley's wartime activities were made public in 1974.

Fraudsters have attempted to steal an estimated $100m from corporate bank accounts using malware and money mules, the FBI said yesterday.

The FBI is seeing several new victim complaints and cases every week, according to an Internet Crime Complaint Center report.

Customers are responsible for their own wi-fi security, according to hotspot operators.

BT Openzone, The Cloud and T-Mobile all recommended wi-fi users adopt VPNs to help protect themselves while using hotspots.

The European Commission has said the UK government doesn't have adequate communications privacy legislation and must step up its efforts.

The announcement follows complaints by UK citizens and privacy groups over the government's lack of action after telco BT conducted trials of the Phorm behavioural advertising service without getting consent from its customers.

CIOs spend hours listening to suppliers pitch their latest technology. How would these vendors fare with just one minute to get their message across?

silicon.com turns up the heat and gives vendors only 60 seconds to impress a panel of CIOs with their products. The IT chiefs then quiz them before delivering their verdict on the technology in the form of a red or green light.

The Guardian Jobs site has suffered a hack that could have exposed the sensitive data of some users.

Personal details included in users' job applications may have been accessed by the hackers, according to an email sent to affected users by Guardian Jobs on Saturday.

2009 may not be over yet but analysts have already revealed the top 10 strategic techs that CIOs should be looking at next year.

According to Gartner, the 10 strategic technologies will have an impact on the enterprise over the next three years, with IT chiefs encouraged to make decisions on them within the next two.

With software spending down 16.5 per cent year-on-year, Windows 7's launch tomorrow will see it enter the market amid one of the toughest squeezes on IT budgets for some time.

The outlook from analysts, however, is a positive one.

Windows 7 is to go on general release this week. Here's a look at the security features of Microsoft's latest OS.

The System and Security sub-section of the Control Panel acts as a clearinghouse for backing up data, preventing security breaches, and maintaining system performance.

Thousands of UK citizens have registered their interest in getting their very own ID card.

According to the Home Office, to date 10,000 people have asked for further information on applying for a card through the DirectGov site.

Although the number of screens the user sees when installing AVG 9 has been cut in half, the installation process is still time-consuming as the program attempts to configure itself best to users' answers. Users can opt out of installing the security toolbar and changing the default search engine.

Screenshot: Seth Rosenblatt/CNET

Scareware is bad for your PC and your pocket - but the fake security warning messages popping up on your screen are only the most visible part of a complex scam.

Scareware is fake security software, often heralded by an ersatz dialogue box warning unsuspecting users that their PC is under attack by malware or that it's at risk of a virus infection. For a small fee, the scareware promises, it can solve those security woes.

The number of scam emails offering fake tax refunds hit an all-time high last month.

According to HM Revenue & Customs, a record 83,000 such phishing attempts were reported in September.

How can businesses collaborate with partners and customers securely? Quocirca's Clive Longbottom and Fran Howarth have the answer.

The number of websites is growing fast. Netcraft reports there were 231.5 million websites in operation as of April 2009 - an increase of 46 million in just three months, with the greatest growth coming from sites that encourage social collaboration and blogging in particular.

Adobe has released a bulletin patching 28 vulnerabilities affecting Adobe Reader and Acrobat.

The release also includes a patch for a critical hole that has reportedly been exploited in the wild.

Microsoft has released the first critical update for Windows 7 on Patch Tuesday, featuring two patches for Internet Explorer, and .Net Framework and Silverlight.

The Windows 7 update is part of a record Patch Tuesday, containing 13 bulletins for 34 vulnerabilities.

The Foreign Secretary David Miliband has paid tribute to the work done by the World War II codebreakers at Bletchley Park who cracked the Enigma code used by Nazi Germany's military.

The Foreign Secretary was speaking at the manor house at Bletchley Park, where he presented commemorative medals to 35 veterans who were part of the 10,000-strong team that helped crack the codes used by the German, Japanese and Italian military.

Companies should create their own "technology watch lists" so they know when cutting-edge technology is ready for widespread adoption - and also to keep the CIO from being ambushed by other execs.

Research company Forrester said enterprise architects (EA) should build a list of technologies to watch, for CIOs to use to educate business peers and influence their strategy. Such a list should also ensure the CIO won't be caught out by other execs clutching case studies of the successful implementation of new technology at other companies.

Airport operator BAA is hoping the roll out of Windows 7 will help simplify its IT infrastructure and contribute to a cost-cutting initiative across the company.

Speaking at a Microsoft customer event in London this week, BAA CIO Philip Langsdale said the company has been testing Windows 7 and now plans to roll it out across the company.

Online banking fraud jumped by 55 per cent during the first six months of this year as criminals become even more sophisticated in their use of technology.

Losses from online banking fraud hit £39m in the first half of the year, despite a decrease in the overall amount of credit card fraud in the UK.

CIOs spend hours listening to suppliers pitch their latest technology. How would these vendors fare with just one minute to get their message across?

silicon.com turns up the heat and gives vendors only 60 seconds to impress a panel of CIOs with their products. The IT chiefs then quiz them before delivering their verdict on the technology in the form of a red or green light.

Hotmail account logins and passwords have been posted to a public forum following a phishing attack.

Several thousand users are thought to be affected although the lists of Hotmail user credentials have since been removed from the code-sharing site where they were posted.

Internet security provider McAfee has announced Online Backup, a service that automatically uploads hard drive data to a remote server via the internet.

McAfee launches Online Backup (Photo credit: Dong Ngo/CNET))

Microsoft has finally unveiled a new security product, Microsoft Security Essentials, designed to replace its former offering OneCare.

Security Essentials, previously known as Morro, is available as a free download from Microsoft and features security tools including antivirus and anti-spyware.

Firefox backer Mozilla has joined Microsoft in criticising Google's Chrome Frame.

Chrome Frame is a plug-in that puts Google's browser engine under the hood of Microsoft's Internet Explorer, and Google argues it can modernise IE versions 6, 7, and 8 with faster page loading and JavaScript performance. It kicks in only on web pages that web developers have labelled with a specific tag.

Researchers at security firm Finjan have discovered details of a new type of banking Trojan horse that doesn't just steal your bank log-in credentials but actually steals money from your account while you are logged in and displays a fake balance.

The bank Trojan, dubbed URLzone, has features designed to thwart fraud detection systems that are triggered by unusual transactions, Yuval Ben-Itzhak, chief technology officer at Finjan, said in an interview on Tuesday. For instance, the software is programmed to calculate on-the-fly how much money to steal from an account based on how much money is available.

Microsoft on Thursday lashed out against Google Chrome Frame - an Internet Explorer plug-in that supplants IE's rendering engine with Google's.

The software maker said users are better off moving to a later version of Internet Explorer if they want the latest technology as opposed to using Chrome Frame.

Microsoft plans to release the final version of its free antivirus software soon, according to a note sent to testers late on Sunday.

"The final version of Microsoft Security Essentials will be released to the public in the coming weeks," Microsoft said in the note.

It's finally over for Beacon, the ill-fated advertising programme that Facebook launched two years ago.

The social network has settled a year-old class action lawsuit that targeted its alleged failure to provide adequate information and privacy controls to users with regard to Beacon, which shared information about users' information on third-party partner sites in Facebook news feeds.

At RSA's Anti-Fraud Command Centre (AFCC) in Herzelia, Israel, more than 100 staff work to detect, dissect and block phishing sites and Trojan attacks 24 hours per day.

From the AFCC, the security firm sifts through more than 10 million emails every day, as well as domain names and fraudster chat rooms, searching for threats to its customers, which include a selection of Britain's high street banks.

Aiming to crack down on a growing problem, Microsoft said it filed five lawsuits on Thursday against parties it suspects of posting online advertisements laden with malicious code.

Microsoft has tried to work with ad networks to thwart such "malvertising" in the past but this is the first time it has gone to court.

Online scammers have created a phishing site masquerading as a US-based bank that launches a live chat window where victims are tricked into revealing more information, researchers at the RSA FraudAction Research Team said on Wednesday.

After a user accesses the phishing site, the chat window messages come through the browser and not via a typical instant messenger application, RSA said in a blog post.

Malware developers are going open source in an effort to make their malicious software more useful to fraudsters.

By giving criminal coders free access to malware that steals financial and personal details, the malicious software developers are hoping to expand the capabilities of old Trojans.

Google has acquired ReCaptcha, one company behind the distorted text boxes found at the bottom of many website sign-in pages.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed but Google plans to use ReCaptcha's technology both as a security measure within certain Google sites and to make its massive book-scanning project a little smarter, the company said in a blog post. ReCaptcha is an offshoot of Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science, and puts a twist on the traditional captcha: a string of letters in squiggly text meant to confuse spam bots and other nonhuman web pests.

The government has appointed its first identity commissioner to keep tabs on the UK's ID cards scheme.

Sir Joseph Pilling will take up the watchdog role from next month, where he will be responsible for independently monitoring how ID cards are used by private companies and public sector organisations, as well as ensuring "information held on the National Identity Register [the database which stores identity details of UK citizens] is accurate and secure", according to the Home Office.

A 28-year-old Miami man who made millions breaking into computer networks and stealing credit card numbers pleaded guilty on Friday and agreed to forfeit more than $2.7m in restitution, as well as a condominium, jewellery and a car.

Albert Gonzalez, a former federal government informant and the alleged ringleader of one of the largest known identity theft cases in US history, pleaded guilty in Boston to 19 counts of conspiracy, computer fraud, wire fraud, access device fraud, and aggravated identity theft relating to the theft of credit and debit card data from TJX Companies, BJ's Wholesale Club, OfficeMax, Boston Market, Barnes & Noble, Sports Authority, among other retailers.

Mozilla on Wednesday released two new versions of its browser, Firefox 3.5.3 and 3.0.14, that patch three critical security holes and fix assorted other bugs.

The updates can be found through the Help menu's Check for Updates option, or can be downloaded directly.

The Australian Federal Police (AFP) has been called in to investigate a planned denial-of-service attack on Australian government web servers.

A spokesperson from the Attorney General's Department (AGD) today said it was aware of the attack planned by a group which calls itself "Anonymous". The group published its threat on YouTube last month.

Microsoft on Tuesday issued five critical Windows-related updates as part of its monthly Patch Tuesday release.

While the issues affect separate versions of Windows differently, Microsoft said none of the issues apply to the final version of Windows 7, which Microsoft wrapped up in July.

Microsoft issued a formal security advisory late on Tuesday on a reported zero-day flaw in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. However, the software maker also said that the flaw does not affect the final version of Windows 7, contrary to earlier reports.

"Microsoft is investigating new public reports of a possible vulnerability in Microsoft Server Message Block (SMB) implementation," Microsoft said in the advisory. "We are not aware of attacks that try to use the reported vulnerabilities or of customer impact at this time."