Password

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.

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.

Mark Zuckerberg, Paypal founder Elon Musk and Ashton Kutcher have invested $40 million in an artificial-intelligence start-up, Vicarious, which can already ‘read’ CAPTCHA codes – and aims to mimic functions of the human brain.

A new wearable authenticator built to be the key to “everything” will be designed by some of the hottest new talents in wearable technology, including the creators of the Neptune Pine smartwatch – one of the only wearable devices to work independently of smartphones.

Two-thirds of top e-commerce sites still accept the weakest passwords, such as “123456” and “password” without warning users that these are the very first passwords hackers will use in attempts to breach their accounts, according to a new survey.

Smartphones such as iPhone 5S rely on buttons to scan fingerprints – but the CEO of biometrics firm CrucialTec says that smartphones with a new hi-tech bezel-free screen which scans fingerprints will go on sale this summer.

An emailed warning and enforced password reset sent out to Twitter users on Monday due to a supposed compromise of their accounts provoked much discussion among site users – before the company admitted the reset had been initiated by mistake.

Samsung has introduced fingerprint-scanning security as standard into its new flagship Galaxy S5 handset – with Finger Scanner offering secure shopping via Paypal direct from the handset in stores and websites, with a finger-swipe replacing passwords.

There are lots of ways that hackers can steal your passwords, and use them against you. So what can you do to fight back?

Google has bought a company offering a new form of two-factor authentication – using “silent” sounds played via PC and smartphone speakers to verify a user is who he or she claims to be

Could places, not phrases, be the basis of secure passwords. UAE researchers have created a system for creating complex passwords using facts about a user’s favourite place – and claim it can foil ID-theft attacks.

Security expert Graham Cluley takes a look at the Kickstarter hack, and discovers there’s more to think about than just changing your passwords.

Couples who have been in a long-term relationship indulge in risky online behaviour, such as sharing passwords for online accounts, with two-thirds of married couples sharing at least one password, a new study by Pew Internet has found.

Microsoft’s online Office 365 service has added a new layer of protection to users of the online document-editing service, with two-factor authentication being rolled out to versions of Office 365 this week.

Body odor could be used as a biometric identifier, with high rates of accuracy, due to chemical patterns in the smell that are unaffected by bodily changes – or deodorant – according to Spanish researchers.

Attackers involved in the Target breach, which led to the theft of 40 million debit and credit card details late last year, broke into the retailer’s network via a heating and air-conditioning contractor, according to a new report.

A Department of Commerce committee will meet for the first time this Thursday to begin discussions on a standard of guidelines for facial recognition software.

Yahoo has announced that its email system has recently been subject to a “coordinated effort to gain unauthorized access”.

The key to beating hackers might not just lie in stronger security measures and ‘unbreakable’ passwords. Now, it seems like an element of trickery is required – almost beating hackers at their own game. Two independent security researchers have developed a system which they call ‘Honey Encryption’, which promises to make it harder for hackers

The Blackberry 10 operating system has been updated to include a ‘photo password’ mechanism, as well as stronger message filtering capabilities.