The fraud went undetected for three years.

The fraudsters appeared to use a sophisticated combination of attacks that consisted of a physical device and a malware component, as witnessed by the fact they have been getting away with their crimes for nigh on three years, according to Tier-3.

Geoff Sweeney, chief technology officer at IT security vendor Tier-3, warned that, in common with more sophisticated IT security attacks, frauds of this nature are very difficult to stop using a traditional single line of defence.

"Companies need to rethink their strategy in the light of the increasing sophistication on the part of the fraudsters," he said.

The results of a survey from Symantec and Ipsos Morishowed that 96 per cent of the general public would want to be notified in the event of their personal details being lost or stolen. The loss of bank account details topped the list for notification at 85 per cent, followed by passport number at 52 per cent.

Antivirus firm McAfee said Hong Kong takes the mantle from Tokelau, a tiny island of 1,500 inhabitants in the South Pacific.

According to the vendor, 19.2 per cent of all web sites ending in the .hk domain pose a security threat to web users. China (.cn) is second this year with over 11 per cent.

By contrast Finland (.fi) remains the safest online destination for the second year with 0.05 per cent, followed by Japan (.jp).

The trick is that using LinkedIn allows scammers to bypass corporate spam filters.

The Asprox botnet uses a SQL-injection attack tool to hack websites and add yet more hijacked PCs to its army.

Application vulnerability specialist Fortify Software confirmed the findings of a research posting to the Debian security list last week, which details a critical security vulnerability in the OpenSSL packages within Debian and Ubuntu.

Fredrick Lee, a researcher with Fortify, said that the posting actually understates the potential seriousness of the flaw, which affects the Open Secure Sockets Layer.

"We're calling this vulnerability `insecure randomness' since it allows an attacker to predict the SSL cryptographic keys used for supposedly secure online transactions," he said.

A recent study by the US National Crime Prevention Council and research firm Harris Interactive found that more than 43 per cent of US citizens aged 13-17 have experienced cyber-bullying in the past year.

Just last week, a US woman was indicted on federal charges of fraudulently using a MySpace account to pose as a teenaged boy. Prosecutors allege that her actions ultimately caused a 13 year-old girl to commit suicide.

European Union regulators have warned Google that its controversial Street View application could contravene EU privacy laws. The service generated controversy when it was found that the photos often displayed individuals on the street and inside buildings.

Street View is protected from litigation under US laws, although Google allows homeowners to request that photos of their dwellings be taken down from the service.

The new botnet has usurped Storm as the largest on the web, and there are suggestion that even Storm's operators are moving on to the new piece of malware for their operations.

The Storm botnet has shrunk to a twentieth of its previous size, according to security firm MessageLabs.

However, the illicit emails actually contain spyware and Trojans designed to steal personal financial information and attack victims' computers.

Sophos identified an average of more than 15,000 newly infected web pages each day from 1 January to 31 March 2008, and 79 per cent of these malware-hosting sites are found on legitimate websites that have been hacked.

In contrast, just one in every 2,500 emails is now infected, compared to one in every 909 in 2007.

The W32.Fakerecy is written primarily for removable drives and was first reported last year. W32.SillyFDC is also adapted for removable drives but can also be used to download more malicious files onto an infected machine.

Good job the finder was a good citizen and handed it in.