Information Society

The Snoopers’ Charter dominated the security headlines this week as home secretary Theresa May gave evidence to parliament in defence of the much-criticised surveillance bill.

In other news, it was revealed that BlackBerry PGP handsets have been cracked by Dutch police. Meanwhile, security experts confirmed that an outage at a Ukraine power grid was a “coordinated and intentional” attack.

Read on for the top security news of the week from V3:

BT, Yahoo and TalkTalk raise concerns with Snoopers’ Charter proposals

Parliamentary scrutiny of the Draft Investigatory Powers Bill included written evidence this week from tech firms including BT, TalkTalk and Yahoo.

Nest bug leaves smart thermostat users cold and angry

A bug in Nest smart home thermostats left customers cold and annoyed after it turned off their heating.

Theresa May vague on government’s encryption plans during Snoopers’ Charter scrutiny

Concerns from technology firms that the UK government wants to weaken encryption or install ‘backdoor’ access to software are unfounded, according to UK home secretary Theresa May who gave evidence in parliament this week.

BlackBerry PGP handsets ‘cracked’ by Dutch cyber cops

BlackBerry hit back at claims that Dutch police and forensic investigators are able to ‘crack’ the encryption of emails and data stored on its devices.

Microsoft releases nine security bulletins in first Patch Tuesday of 2016

Microsoft released nine security bulletins in the January Patch Tuesday update, six of which are listed as critical.

Europol arrests two suspected DD4BC hackers with Met Police help

European crime agency Europol announced the arrest of two suspected members of the Distributed Denial of Service for Bitcoin hacking collective.

Trend Micro rolls out emergency patch to fix password manager security flaw

Trend Micro released an emergency patch to resolve critical security vulnerabilities in a core product that could allow hackers to view encrypted passwords and execute malicious code.

Security experts confirm Ukraine power grid blackout a ‘coordinated intentional attack’

Detailed analysis by cyber experts at SANS Industrial Control Systems confirmed that the outage at a Ukraine power grid was a “coordinated intentional attack”.

Juniper bulks up security and eliminates ‘unauthorised code’ linked to NSA

Juniper Networks will stop using a piece of unauthorised code in its products believed to have been inserted by NSA spies to snoop on the private communications of its customers.