Netflix 4K streaming goes live

9 April 2014 Last updated at 13:29

Streaming 4K video is now available on Netflix after earlier announcements that the on-demand video service would be introducing ultra-HD content.

Early adopters of 4K may be unable to take advantage of the new feature as the decoder required to view Netflix 4K videos is not built into early 4K televisions.

There are currently few alternatives to overcome the problem.

Shows available include House of Cards and "some nature documentaries".

It has been confirmed by Netflix via Multichannel News that 4K streaming is now live and available for a select number of programmes, including the second season of House of Cards.

However, initial access to the service is limited, with older 4K televisions unable to stream the new high-quality content.

Most 4K televisions purchased before this year lack the H.265/HEVC decoder required to stream Netflix's ultra-HD service.

Necessary speeds

Netflix chief executive Reed Hastings has said that an average speed of 15.6 Mbps would be required to stream its 4K content.

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Netflix's chief executive discussed his 4K ambitions earlier this year

This could pose additional problems for UK users, whose collective average download speed is below this threshold.

"Average broadband speeds in the UK are 7.6 megabits per second. You would need to have at least double that speed to watch 4K reliably on a streamed basis," IHS broadband analyst Richard Broughton told the BBC last November.

"Currently only 15% to 20% of households have the speeds necessary."

Despite the increased demand for 4K, some commentators still have reservations about whether the human eye is truly capable of viewing the difference between 1080p and ultra-HD 4K resolutions.

The eye has a finite resolution, says Geoffrey Morrison, former editor-in-chief of Home Entertainment Magazine, which makes most instances of extreme resolutions needless.

Beyond the home, for example in cinemas, the use of 4K and higher remains desirable for many, with a report from Sony stating: "4K makes a visible difference on screens big and small... 4K projection is scalable, accommodating 4K, 2K, HD and other digital content."

Netflix is thought to have been working on its 4K streaming service since last November.

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Google Glass on sale for one day

11 April 2014 Last updated at 14:53

Google Glass will go on sale to the US public on 15 April for a single day, the company has announced.

Users must be 18 years old and are required to fill in an online form in order to be eligible to buy the device.

The eyewear will cost $1,500 (£894) and the BBC understands UK developers may have access as early as May.

The high price will be likely to deter many enthusiasts, who may be forced to wait for price reductions.

The tech giant sold the device to 8,000 individuals in 2013 as part of their Explorer programme. Google will now give more people the opportunity to test the computer, a sign that the company is getting closer to an official release.

The BBC understands that UK developers may have access to the device as early as May or June, making Britain the first country outside the US to gain additional prototypes.

Continue reading the main story

[Google] doesn't actually want average Joes using it until it's a much more mature product"

End Quote Evan Kypreos Editor of TrustedReviews

The Glass team said they were "excited to meet our new Explorers, and we can't wait to hear your thoughts about Glass."

'Limited functionality'

While the £894 asking price seems high, Steven Graves, deputy editor of Stuff.tv, told the BBC this was likely to change: "The thing you have to bear in mind is it is still in development and that people are buying into that development.

"I think it's quite a high price but that doesn't necessarily reflect what the price will be when it is eventually released to consumers. At this stage they just want to get it in a few more hands."

Google Glass will be sold on a first-come, first-served basis after an initial online sign-up process.

Evan Kypreos, editor of TrustedReviews, said: "$1,500 is far too expensive for something that has very limited functionality at the moment.

"Google is targeting just a few early adopters to understand how to further develop Glass and doesn't actually want average Joes using it until it's a much more mature product.

"It's similar to how mobile phones came about," explains Mr Kypreos. "In the 80s, only a handful of people used them. They were bulky, expensive and could only be used to make calls. Thirty years later and most of the population has a smartphone that can do pretty much anything a PC can."

Early adopters of the wearable headset include BBC's Rory Cellan-Jones, who has been blogging about his experience.

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Protests as Condi Rice joins Dropbox

11 April 2014 Last updated at 15:06

The appointment of ex-US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the board of technology firm Dropbox is being criticised by some service users.

Protests on social media say she is a controversial figure after revelations of widespread wiretapping on US citizens during her time in office.

A petition has been launched inviting supporters to boycott the firm.

However some analysts claim the bigger concerns for the file-sharing company are competing services.

Following the launch of Mailbox for Android and the wider implementation of Dropbox for Business, the company also announced the addition of Condoleezza Rice as a new board member.

Continue reading the main story

We're honoured to be adding someone as brilliant and accomplished as Dr Rice to our team."

End Quote Dropbox

Ms Rice, who served as former President George W Bush's Secretary of State from 2005 to 2009 and National Security Adviser 2001 - 2005, was appointed by the company to expand its global footprint, according to its official blog.

However, this has been condemned by some Dropbox users who have launched a campaign.

Voicing concerns on social media, some have said it is inappropriate for the file-sharing company to hire Ms Rice, accusing her of being involved in widespread wiretapping during her time in office.

Those pressing Dropbox to revoke Ms Rice's appointment are using the hashtag #DropDropbox in an attempt to boycott the company. A petition has also been created which amassed approximately 3,000 signatures in its first few hours.

Another site said: "This is deeply disturbing, and anyone - or any business - who values ethics should be concerned," before listing a number of Dropbox alternatives for those who wish to boycott the company.

It also says Ms Rice should not hold power at Dropbox because of her role in the Iraq war.

'Short-term'

However, Chris Green, Principal Technology Analyst of Davies Murphy Group, told the BBC that most users probably wouldn't be concerned over Ms Rice's appointment.

"The vast majority of the company's 275 million users are unlikely to be swayed or concerned by the short-term negative PR that Condoleezza Rice's appointment is generating for Dropbox," he said.

"The backlash is fuelled far more by pent-up anger at the administration she served in than a genuine concern for the security of Dropbox users' data.

The bigger concern for Dropbox, says Mr Green, is the growing competition it faces, which includes big names such as Microsoft, Google and Amazon.

All of them "are offering competing services with either more free storage or more compelling commercial packages than Dropbox offers."

The company has yet to release an official statement addressing the backlash, but a recent Dropbox blog post said: "We're honoured to be adding someone as brilliant and accomplished as Ms Rice to our team."

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'Selfie' body image warning issued

10 April 2014 Last updated at 10:19 By Helen Briggs BBC News

Spending lots of time on Facebook looking at pictures of friends could make women insecure about their body image, research suggests.

The more women are exposed to "selfies" and other photos on social media, the more they compare themselves negatively, according to a study.

Friends' photos may be more influential than celebrity shots as they are of known contacts, say UK and US experts.

The study is the first to link time on social media to poor body image.

The mass media are known to influence how people feel about their appearance.

Continue reading the main story

The attention to physical attributes may be even more dangerous on social media than on traditional media because participants in social media are people we know"

End Quote Petya Eckler University of Strathclyde, Glasgow

But little is known about how social media impact on self-image.

Young women are particularly high users of social networking sites and post more photographs of themselves on the internet than do men.

To look at the impact on body image, researchers at the University of Strathclyde, Ohio University and University of Iowa surveyed 881 female college students in the US.

The women answered questions about their Facebook use, eating and exercise regimes, and body image.

'Unrealistic images'

The research, presented at a conference in Seattle, found no link with eating disorders.

But it did find a link between time spent on social networks and negative comparisons about body image.

The more time women spent on Facebook, the more they compared their bodies with those of their friends, and the more they felt negative about their appearance.

"Spending more time on Facebook is not connected to developing a bad relationship with food, but there is a connection to poor body image," Petya Eckler, of the University of Strathclyde, in Glasgow, told the BBC.

She added: "The attention to physical attributes may be even more dangerous on social media than on traditional media because participants in social media are people we know.

"These comparisons are much more relevant and hit closer to home. Yet they may be just as unrealistic as the images we see on traditional media."

'Sense of identity'

A spokesperson for the Beat eating disorders charity said body image was a key part of our sense of identity and not a trivial matter or personal vanity.

A preoccupation with weight and shape was one of the key features of current popular culture, and was a global phenomenon, she said.

"The fascination with celebrities, their bodies, clothes and appearance has all increased the pressure that people typically feel at a time when they seek to establish their own identities and when their bodies are growing and changing," she said.

"Young people compare themselves to the images that bombard them and feel it is their fault that their bodies compare so unfavourably."

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Hard disk pioneer wins tech prize

9 April 2014 Last updated at 10:39 By Leo Kelion Technology desk editor

A British scientist whose work made it possible for hard disks to radically expand in size has been awarded the Millennium Technology Prize.

Prof Stuart Parkin developed a type of data-reading head capable of detecting weaker and smaller signals than had previously been possible.

The innovation allowed more information to be stored on each disk platter.

The foundation behind the award said he had made Facebook, Google, Amazon and other online services possible.

"Parkin is a leading innovator in the field of spintronics, which relies on the magnetic spin of electrons rather than their charge to store bits and is one of the most successful fields of nanotechnology yet," said Technology Academy Finland.

"[His] innovations have led to a huge expansion of data acquisition and storage capacities, which in turn have underpinned the evolution of large data centres and cloud services, social networks, music and film distribution online."

Previous winners of the one million euro ($1.38m; £824,000) award - which is announced every other year - include web inventor Tim Berners-Lee and the Linux operating system kernel developer Linus Torvalds.

Those selected are judged to have invented something that either has changed or has the power to change people's lives for the better, ideally on a global scale.

Sensitive detector

Prof Parkin's field of expertise is a branch of physics called spintronics - or spin electronics.

In this case, the word "spin" refers to a quantum mechanical property of an electron that can be likened to a planet turning around its axis.

Just as planets can rotate clockwise or anti-clockwise, electrons are said to be able to spin up or down - an action that sets up a magnetic field.

The analogy is not perfect, but in short the phenomenon can be exploited to store bits of data on atomically-thin magnetic structures.

Prof Parkin made this possible by building on the observations of two Nobel Prize winners - Albert Fert and Peter Grunberg - to create a highly sensitive detector capable of discerning small magnetic fields at room temperature.

"The spin valve sensing device allowed one to detect much tinier magnetic fields and therefore smaller magnetic regions in a magnetic disk drive," he explained to the BBC.

"The information in a disk drive is basically stored as magnetic regions in a very thin magnetic film.

"So, now we could detect much smaller regions than was possible before, in fact about 1,000 times smaller because of the extreme sensitivity of the spin valve sensing device."

The work was carried out for IBM, and the firm commercialised the technology in 1997. It soon became an industry standard, allowing disk capacity to quadruple roughly once a year for several years.

That not only made it possible to store more information in computers but also meant it became affordable to build giant data centres.

"The modern world is sustained by our ability to store all our information in magnetic disk drives essentially in the cloud, so that you can instantaneously carry out Google searches, instantly stream music and movies," added Prof Parkin.

"None of those things would be possible without the immense capacities of magnetic disk drives at the very low cost that is possible today... thanks to this spintronic sensing device."

Racetrack memory

The professor continues to work for IBM, and is hoping to spearhead a further storage revolution with an experimental technology he is developing for the firm called Racetrack memory.

The goal is to exploit spintronics to create a new type of storage that would consume less energy than magnetic disk drives but be as high-performing as solid-state flash memory - a more expensive alternative.

"By building a three-dimensional device with tiny nanoscopic wires in which a whole series of magnetic regions are raced to and fro, it can increase the storage capacity of conventional solid-state memory 100-fold," he said.

"It would be as fast and reliable as conventional solid state memories but would be as cheap and capacious as a magnetic disk drive - basically containing the best of both worlds."

While the professor is keen to highlight how his work has made it possible for the internet to offer vast amounts of information and entertainment, he acknowledges that the technology has also been used for more controversial purposes - including the storage and analysis of large amounts of information about the public by cyber-spy agencies.

Even so, he said he had few regrets.

"Of course it's a concern if people misuse data if they can," he said.

"It's like any scientific discovery or development - it can be used for good and sometimes used for bad.

"In my mind the goodness certainly outweighs any downside. The discoveries that can be made possible and the knowledge that can be gained by having access to the information certainly outweigh any negatives in my mind."

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BBC 'complacent' over IT failure

10 April 2014 Last updated at 00:46

The BBC was "far too complacent" in its handling of a failed IT project that cost licence fee payers £98.4m.

The Digital Media Initiative (DMI) was intended to move the BBC away from using and storing video tape.

But it was scrapped, with almost no results, after five years of development.

After investigating the demise of the project, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has branded the programme "a complete failure".

Chairman Margaret Hodge said the BBC needed to "overhaul" its approach to such projects, to "safeguard licence fee payers' money".

The BBC originally approved DMI in 2006. It was supposed to produce new editing tools, an online archive of the BBC's programmes and a new database.

Technology company Siemens was hired to develop the project in February 2008, and it was expected to be completed the following year.

Continue reading the main story

• Contractors - £46.7m
• IT - £37.2m
• Siemens costs - £24.9m
• Consultancy - £8.4m
• BBC staff - £6.4m
• Other - £2.3m

However, after a series of delays, the project was brought in-house, There it floundered until last May, when the BBC's incoming director general, Tony Hall, admitted it had "wasted a huge amount of licence fee payers' money".

The gross estimate of the amount spent on DMI was £125.9m, although the BBC claims to have recouped £27.5m of that.

The BBC's technology chief, John Linwood, was sacked in July 2013 over the project's demise.

A previous report, by the National Audit Office (NAO), blamed "confusion and a lack of planning" for the failure.

It said that senior executives failed to take control of the project when it ran into trouble and "did not appear to appreciate the extent of the problems until a late stage".

Apology

The PAC published its own findings on Thursday. It reiterated several of the points raised in earlier reports and criticised the BBC for its failure to alert MPs of the problems.

"When my committee examined the DMI's progress in February 2011, the BBC told us that the DMI was... absolutely essential... and that a lot of the BBC's future was tied up in the successful delivery of the DMI," said Ms Hodge.

"The BBC also told us that it was using the DMI to make many programmes and was on track to complete the system in 2011 with no further delays.

"This turned out not to be the case. In reality the BBC only ever used the DMI to make one programme, called Bang Goes the Theory.

"The BBC was far too complacent about the high risks involved in taking it in-house. No single individual had overall responsibility or accountability for delivering the DMI and achieving the benefits, or took ownership of problems when they arose."

A BBC spokesman said: "Tony Hall was right to scrap the DMI project when he took over as director general last year. As we said at the time, the BBC didn't get DMI right and we apologised to licence fee payers.

"Since then we have completely overhauled how these projects are delivered so that there is crystal clear accountability and transparency."

A spokeswoman for the BBC Trust, the corporation's governing body, said: "As we have said before, this represented an unacceptable loss to licence fee payers.

"Acting on the conclusions of previous reports into DMI, we have strengthened reporting to the Trust so that problems are spotted early and dealt with quickly.

"We are also carrying out follow up reviews once projects are completed to make sure the lessons from DMI are being implemented."

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'RoboClam' could anchor submarines

10 April 2014 Last updated at 01:33 By James Morgan Science reporter, BBC News

A new burrowing robot for anchoring miniature submarines has been developed - inspired by the humble razor clam.

"RoboClam" could be used to lay undersea cables, and potentially even destroy mines, its inventors say.

The device mimics the digging action used by razor clams to turn solid soil into liquid "quicksand", helping them slide through.

A prototype is described in the journal Bioinspiration and Biomimetics by engineers from MIT in Boston, US.

Continue reading the main story

The cool thing is this technology is already 10 times more efficient than any anchor"

End Quote Dr Kerstin Nordstrom University of Maryland

They set out to design a new low-power, light-weight anchor for autonomous underwater vehicles.

"Luckily, nature had already done the work for us," said Dr Kerstin Nordstrom, of the University of Maryland, who collaborated on the research.

The answer was poking out of mudflats off the coast at nearby Gloucester, MA.

The Atlantic razor clam, Ensis directus, has been dubbed "the Ferrari of underwater diggers".

An animal of its modest frame (10-20cm) should only be strong enough to penetrate 2cm into packed sand. But it can burrow up to 70cm in just over a minute.

Compared to existing anchor technology "the razor clam is about 10 times more efficient," Dr Nordstrom told the BBC's Science in Action.

To dig for half a kilometre, it would only use the energy in an AA battery.

"But when you try plunging the shell into the sand, it doesn't actually penetrate very far," said Dr Nordstrom.

"What this shows is the clam must be actively doing something to the ground when it digs."

To find out the razor clam's secret, they studied its digging action and modelled it mechanically.

The repeated open-shut of the clam's valves turned the hard-packed soil around it into quicksand.

"The clam's trick is to move its shells in such a way as to liquefy the soil around its body, reducing the drag acting upon it," said Amos Winter, of MIT's Department of Mechanical Engineering.

"Pushing through sand costs a lot of energy. But if the sand is excited, it's actually very easy. That's the trick," added Dr Nordstrom.

By mimicking the action of the razor clam, they built their own robotic prototype - which has achieved the same digging speed - about 1cm per second.

The first "RoboClam" can only reach 20cm, and requires a significant rig of machinery to propel it.

But having demonstrated the principle, the team now aims to develop a larger, self-contained unit, that can burrow more than 10 metres.

This could be used to anchor larger vessels, and may have military applications - such as detonating mines, the researchers suggest.

"The cool thing is this technology is already 10 times more efficient than any anchor. If we can keep scaling things up, some day it will affect big boats," said Dr Nordstrom.

"Also - undersea cable installation is happening more and more frequently. If we can do it more efficiently we can save costs and cause less disturbance to the environment," she said.

Amos Winter agrees: "Having a system that could just latch onto the cable, work its way along, and automatically dig it into the soil would be great," he said.

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US card thief faces lengthy jail term

10 April 2014 Last updated at 17:24

A key member of a gang that traded stolen and fake credit cards could face years in jail after pleading guilty to racketeering charges.

Cameron Harrison of Georgia, US, was part of a large card fraud ring centred around the Carder.su website.

About $50m (£30m) in losses have been attributed to the group that used the Carder.su site.

The group was broken up by US law enforcement in 2012 and so far, 55 of its members have been charged.

The ring leaders of the group, which was run via Russia, are still believed to be at large.

The case is believed to be among the first to use racketeering laws against cybercriminals. Before now the laws were used against members of more traditional organised crime groups.

Harrison, aka Kilobit, joined the group in 2008 and was instrumental in helping it steal credit cards, IDs and engage in financial fraud.

Documents filed by the US Department of Justice against Harrison show that he has been indicted under two counts of racketeering and one of making and selling fake ID documents.

US guidelines suggest he will face decades in prison when he is sentenced later this year because those rules inflate prison terms if a crime affects more than 250 victims or involves losses higher than $50m.

The US government is also seeking to make Harrison and other former Carder.su members pay $50m in restitution to the four credit card firms they stole from - Visa, Discover, American Express and MasterCard.

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Somalia's internet 'culture shock'

10 April 2014 Last updated at 18:28

Some residents of Somalia's capital have been experiencing a form of "culture shock" since fibre optic services launched over the last week, an internet provider has told the BBC.

"Any video or site just pops up... they're very excited about the speed," Somalia Wireless's Liban Egal says.

Until now access to the internet has been via dial-up or satellite links.

Earlier this year, 3G mobile phone services were cut off because of a threat from Islamist militants.

The al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab group issued a directive in January ordering all internet services to be stopped, saying those who did not comply would be seen as "working with the enemy" and dealt with according to Islamic law.

Al-Shabab was driven out of the capital, Mogadishu, in August 2011, but still controls many smaller towns and rural areas in the south and centre of the country where they have imposed a strict version of Sharia.

Following their threat, 3G networks nationwide were turned off but the project to launch fibre optic cable services continued in the capital, the BBC's Moalimu Mohammed reports from Mogadishu.

'Day and night'

He says the fibre optic connections, which have been rolled out over the last week by several internet providers, are only available in Mogadishu.

People have been flocking to hotels and internet cafes to try out the fast service - some seeing video platforms like YouTube and social networking sites for the first time, our correspondent says.

Mr Egal said the difference in speed was like the difference between "day and night".

For those residents who have recently returned from the diaspora the development was a relief, he said.

It was "almost a culture shock" for those who have never left Somalia, he added.

He said the move would be a huge boost for the country, which is recovering from more than two decades of civil war.

"Every time a fibre optic cable is connected to a country they see their GDP [gross domestic product] going up because their communication costs go down," Mr Egal said.

"All life will be affected - businesses, the government, universities - they all will see the benefits."

Our reporter says the current security situation will limit the rollout of fibre optic services to the rest of the country.

Since 1991 Somalia has seen clan-based warlords, rival politicians and Islamist militants battle for control - a situation that has allowed lawlessness to flourish.

An African Union force has been helping the UN-backed government fight al-Shabab, which wants to create an Islamic state in Somalia.

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US warns of Heartbleed bug danger

11 April 2014 Last updated at 18:50 By Leo Kelion Technology desk editor

The US government has warned that it believes hackers are trying to make use of the Heartbleed bug.

The Department of Homeland Security advised the public to change passwords for sites affected by the flaw once they had confirmed they were secure.

However, an official added that there had not been any reported attacks or malicious incidents.

The alert comes as several makers of net hardware and software revealed some of their products had been compromised.

Continue reading the main story

'A mistake'

A German computer programmer has accepted responsibility for the emergence of the Heartbleed bug, according to a report in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Robin Seggelman, a 31 year old from Oelde - 120 miles (193km) north of Frankfurt - is reported to have made the mistake while trying to improve the OpenSSL cryptographic library on 31 December 2011.

"It's tempting to assume that, after the disclosure of the spying activities of the NSA and other agencies, but in this case it was a simple programming error in a new feature, which unfortunately occurred in a security-relevant area," he told Fairfax Media.

"It was not intended at all, especially since I have previously fixed OpenSSL bugs myself, and was trying to contribute to the project."

Affected equipment includes network routers and switches, video conferencing kit, phone call software, firewalls and apps that let workers remotely access company data.

The encryption flaw can potentially be exploited to steal passwords and secret keys used to protect computer users.

Browser alerts

Experts say home kit is less at risk.

There had been reports that domestic home networking equipment - such as wi-fi routers - might also make use of unpatched versions of the OpenSSL cryptographic library used to digitally scramble sensitive data.

However, a security researcher at the University of Cambridge's Computer Laboratory said he thought this would be a relatively rare occurrence.

"You would have to be a semi-professional to have this sort of equipment at home," Dr Richard Clayton told the BBC.

"It's unusual to find secure connections to a home router because you'd have to have a certificate in the device.

"If that certificate were self-signed it would generate browser warnings. Alternatively, you could be regularly updated but that would cost money."

UK internet service providers (ISPs) Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin Media confirmed that their home router suppliers had told them their equipment did not use OpenSSL.

Password resets

News of the Heartbleed bug emerged on Monday when Google Security and Codenomicon - a Finnish security company - revealed that a flaw had existed in OpenSSL for more than two years.

This had made it possible to impersonate services and users, and potentially eavesdrop on data communications.

Continue reading the main story

Dangerous or not?

Internet security firm Cloudfare has cast doubt over how great the danger posed by Heartbleed is, saying it has been unable to exploit the flaw to obtain the secret SSL keys that would put people's data at risk.

The US company was one of those given early warning of the vulnerability before Monday's public announcement, and has had 12 days to carry out tests.

"Note that is not the same as saying it is impossible to use Heartbleed to get private keys," blogged software engineering leader Nick Sullivan.

"We do not yet feel comfortable saying that. However, if it is possible, it is at a minimum very hard."

The news prompted news site The Verge to lead with the headline: "Heartbleed security flaw may not be as dangerous as thought"

But Codenomicon - the security firm that sounded the first alert - stands by its warning.

"We know what we found," chief executive David Chartier told the BBC.

"Access to memory is a very serious vulnerability and it's great that people are taking quick action to upgrade and remediate the problem.

"If you search on the internet you will find many people have replicated the problem."

The flaw only exposed 64K of data at a time, but a malicious party could theoretically make repeated grabs until they had the information they wanted.

The website set up to publicise the danger noted that it was possible to carry out such an attack "without leaving a trace", making it impossible to know for sure if criminals or cyberspies had taken advantage of it.

Media reports initially focused on the risk of logging into compromised online services such as webmail, cloud storage and banking, with some - but not all - companies suggesting users should reset their passwords.

Risk to business

Warnings from companies including Cisco, Juniper, Fortinet, Red Hat and Watchguard Technologies that some of their internet products are compromised may now place the spotlight on the corporate sector.

Dr Clayton explained how such a hacker could take advantage of the problem.

"If you managed to log into a router then the simplest thing you could do would be to change the DNS [domain name system] settings in there," he said.

"Then you could arrange that everything on the internet resolves correctly apart from, for example, Barclays.com, which you could set to resolve to a malicious site that asks for the visitors' details."

Prof Alan Woodward, a security expert at the University of Surrey, gave another scenario in which hackers could take advantage of flaws in virtual private network software used to let workers log into corporate networks when not in the office.

'Closely monitor'

"The worst case would be that they could reach in and see the keys," he said.

"Hence all the traffic going to and from remote workers that people thought was secure could potentially be decrypted.

"But you would be working through quite a few layers of things to get to that because the way OpenSSL is used is quite complicated."

The US government has said that it was working with third-party organisations "to determine the potential vulnerabilities to computer systems that control essential systems - like critical infrastructure, user-facing and financial systems".

Meanwhile, officials suggested members of the public should "closely monitor your email accounts, bank accounts, social media accounts and other online assets for irregular or suspicious activity, such as abnormal purchases or messages".

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Rory Cellan-Jones looks at ways to manage strong online passwords

The UK has given similar advice.

"People should take advice on changing passwords from the websites they use," said a Cabinet Office spokesman.

"Most websites have corrected the bug and are best placed to advise what action, if any, people need to take."

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