Government departments have been prodded into revealing some of the details of hacker attempts against them.
It's unsurprising that the MoD has reported the most hacking attempts. After all, with all those military secrets it is likely to be a far more interesting target for hackers than, say, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
These details emerged in the same week that one alleged hacker spoke up about the motivations of such misguided thrill-seekers.
The hacker, a 39-year-old man from north London, says he was searching US government systems for evidence of UFO cover-ups, and found many other hackers accessing those systems at the same time. One would guess these are the same sort of misguided souls who would love to get into UK government computers too.
Yet the fact that there are apparently so many hackers targeting government systems makes some of the MoD's figures seem puzzling. For example, the MoD says it has been subjected to a mere six "external probes or scans" this year, which would be low even for a lowly home PC with a broadband connection.
Perhaps the answer lies in the fact the MoD says half of hacking attempts come from inside the organisation, more evidence to back up the belief that internal attackers are the biggest risk. External hackers might be the ones that capture the popular imagination but it may well be the internal ones which end up capturing - and making off with - your most sensitive data.
So should we be reassured or worried that other government departments did not provide the same level of information as the MoD when asked - and merely said there was no evidence of any hacking?
After all, we are all aware that hackers are out there, patiently trying out backdoors into computer systems and waiting for someone to leave one unlocked. Since it's unlikely these departments are not being targeted, we must assume they're simply unaware of the hacker activity.
