Government earmarks £15m to fight hackers

The DTI has set aside £15m to combat the growing threat of Internet hackers.

The money will be used to fund a project known as the Computational Immunology for Fraud Detection (CIFD).

Patricia Hewitt, small business and ecommerce minister, said: "We have recently seen to devastating effect how hackers can penetrate and disrupt services offered on the Internet. Projects I have approved today will help us combat these Internet criminals."

The project is among six approved for funding under the first call of the DTI's Management of Information (MI) programme - a three year collaborative initiative to encourage the development of new technologies and systems, that will detect and counter ecommerce fraud and also improve the security and privacy of individuals and organisations against conventional crimes of forgery, illegal access and theft.