The internet is ablaze with gossip about the state of Sandra Bullock's marriage to Jesse James, after it was alleged that the Oscar winner's husband was having an affair with tattoo model Michelle "Bombshell" McGee.

With such a hot trending story, it's no surprise that hackers have not been slowcoaches in exploiting the interest to their own advantage, taking the opportunity to spread their attacks disguised as content related to the breaking news.

Sure enough, we are seeing web pages appearing high in search results - through the hackers use of search engine optimisation (SEO) techniques - which point to dangerous webpages.

In the following pictured example, the pages appear on the first page of results if you search for content related to Michelle McGee.

It isn't just pages about the tattoo-ridden McGee that are dangerous though. There are also poisoned webpages related to other search terms associated with Sandra Bullock and Jesse James's relationship.

Clicking on links like this will endanger the security of your computer - exposing you to scams such as fake anti-virus software and identity theft.

And if you're in any doubt as to just how hot search terms like "Michelle Bombshell McGee Pictures" are on Google right now - just take a look at this graph:

Hackers are time and time again exploiting interest in hot news stories - underlining the importance of running a security solution that scans every single webpage you visit, and the necessity to keep up-to-date with patches.

If you can't help yourself and are desperate for a celebrity gossip fix - even when it does involve someone else's marriage potentially dissolving - then it might be more sensible to go to an established news website rather than clicking through to sites you are unfamiliar with.

* Image source: John Griffiths' Flickr photostream (Creative Commons)

A 20-year-old man has been arrested in Austin, Texas, after allegedly hacking into a computer system which caused more than 100 cars to be disabled with, in some cases, their horns blaring out repeatedly.

Omar Ramos-Lopez, a former employee of Texas Auto Center, a collection of 4 car dealerships in the Austin area, is suspected of breaking into a web-based immobilisation system called WebTeck Plus that is normally only used if customers are behind in making their payments.

According to a report in Wired magazine, the car dealership had fitted the devices, which are the size of a deck of cards, into vehicles, giving the ability to disable a car's ignition or trigger the horn if a payment is due.

Thankfully, the cars cannot be disabled while they are in motion.

For five days in the last week of February, more than a 100 customers found themselves without transportation and were forced to miss work, call tow trucks or disconnect their car batteries. Only when the car dealership reset its employees passwords did things return to normal. An investigation by Austin's High Tech Crime Unit uncovered an IP address used in the hack, which is said to have pointed to Omar Ramos-Lopez.

According to authorities, Texas Auto Center did the right thing - and terminated Ramos-Lopez's username and password when he lost his job last month, but he is alleged to have gained access after using another employee's account.

I must admit I don't think I've ever heard of a hacker breaching cars quite like this before. The only consolation for the rest of us is that it's pretty unlikely that we are likely to face the same risk, unless we purchase a car from a "cheap-and-chips" car dealership that specialises in lots of high-risk purchasers.

Although this attack is definitely out-of-the-ordinary it does underline the importance of proper password security - something that many businesses definitely need to learn a lesson about.

The Australian spam watchdog has fined Virgin Mobile AU $22,000 (approximately £13,200) after the company was found to have sent emails to customers who had opted out of receiving promotions.

According to a report in the Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) received complaints from Virgin Mobile customers who had requested not to receive email messages from the company.

Part of the message sent by Virgin Mobile read:

To make sure you're still certain about this choice, we just wanted to quickly show you some examples of recent offers that we've sent to customers

In other words, whoever was responsible for sending the email from within Virgin Mobile knew that the recipient had requested not to receive further emails from the firm, but just wanted to "make sure".

ACMA understandably took a dim view of such behaviour, and the unsolicited and unauthorised commerical emails were looked on even more dimly when it was seen that they gave the user no option to unsubscribe. (Mind you, as the recipients had already unsubscribed - to no effect - it's hard to know what they would expect an unsubscribe option to do).

As ACMA chairman Chris Chapman explains, "An organisation must respect a person's desire not to receive commercial electronic messages, even if it is just to ask if they have changed their mind."

Make sure you don't have over-exuberant members of staff inside your company, who might wrongly imagine that sending emails like this is acceptable. Otherwise, it could be your firm making the headlines next time.