Gordon Brown claims Murdoch staff also used malware to hack PCs

Gordon Brown has added to the growing body of evidence suggesting that News International journalists not only obtained information for stories from phone hacking but from victims' computers as well.

In a Commons debate on Wednesday, the former prime minister launched a scathing attack on the Murdoch empire and the methods used by its staff to obtain exclusives.

In particular he referred to the "systematic use of base and unlawful methods - new crimes with new names; blagging, hacking, Trojans to break into computers and not just phones".

Sophos senior technology consultant Graham Cluley suggested that Brown could well be right, pointing to a Panorama programme earlier this year which uncovered claims that the News of the World had used malware to harvest information from a former British army officer.

"If an investigator thinks it is acceptable to break into mobile phone voicemail accounts and listen to messages without authorisation, are they going to have any qualms about sending emails with malicious attachments to the people they're trying to dig the dirt up on?" he wrote in a blog post.

"The spyware Trojan area of the whole ‘hacking' scandal hasn't been covered much in the media yet, but it may only be a matter of time."

Former sex worker and Blooker prize nominee Brooke Magnanti has already claimed on Twitter that that she was the victim of multiple malware hacking attempts prior to 2006 from members of the press.

"I had Trojans in email from certain newspapers pre-2006. I wonder how many also had but didn't realise it," she tweeted.

It would certainly come as no surprise if the accusations turn out to be true, but on the positive side the huge media coverage the cases are receiving may at least highlight, if it needs to be highlighted again, the dangers of information-stealing malware.