In Skyfall, the 2012 film in the James Bond series, our erstwhile hero comes back from the ‘dead’ to fight the fictional cyber villain, Raoul Silva, who manages to interfere with satellite signals, attack the London underground, tamper with elections and destabilise the stock market.

A UCD spin-out company has been acquired by a major US security data firm for $68m (€59.47m) in a cash and equity deal.

New warnings are emerging of a security flaw known as the “Bash” bug, which cyber experts say could pose a serious threat to computers and other devices using Unix-based operating systems such as Linux and Mac OS X.