Mark Dalby

Hackers have released tools that unlock the software stored on heavily fortified chips so researchers can independently assess their security and spot weaknesses.

At the heart of the the release, which was announced Wednesday at the Black Hat Security conference in Las Vegas, is Degate, software developed by Martin Schobert for hardware experts to analyze small silicon structures. It has recently been refined so it can be used by amateurs to analyze chips the size of smartcards.

Former British newspaper editor Piers Morgan, now a presenter for US television network CNN, has denied fresh allegations that he printed stories obtained through phone hacking.

Morgan – a former editor of Rupert Murdoch’s now shuttered News of the World paper and of the rival Daily Mirror tabloid – made his latest denial after British media printed comments that he made in a BBC radio programme in 2009.

“As I have said before, I have never hacked a phone, told anyone to hack a phone, nor to my knowledge published any story obtained from the hacking of a phone,” Morgan said in a statement, issued through his publicist at CNN’s parent company Turner Broadcasting System. In the 2009 programme, “Desert Island Discs”, presenter Kirsty Young asked Morgan how he felt about having to deal with “people who rake through bins for a living, people who tap people’s phones” to get information for tabloids.

A Harvard University fellow who was studying ethics was charged with hacking into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s computer network to steal nearly 5 million academic articles.

Aaron Swartz, 24, of Cambridge, was accused of stealing the documents from JSTOR, a popular research subscription service that offers digitized copies of more than 1000 academic journals and documents, some dating back to the 17th century.

In an indictment released on Tuesday, prosecutors say Swartz stole 4.8 million articles between September 2010 and January after breaking into a computer wiring closet on MIT’s campus. Swartz, then a student at the Harvard’s Centre for Ethics, downloaded so many documents during one October day that some of JSTOR’s computer servers crashed, according to the indictment. Prosecutors say Swartz intended to distribute the articles on file-sharing websites.

As the phone hacking saga continues to grip the country, mobile operators are saying that spying on someone’s voicemail messages wouldn’t be possible today as several weaknesses in the systems have been eliminated.

Reporters and private investigators working for the News of the World and Sun, owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., are accused of repeatedly illegally accessed the voicemail messages of more than 4,000 people — from royal family members to an abducted and later murdered 13-year-old girl in 2002 — for information for news stories.

The scandal has led to the arrest of a top adviser to Prime Minister David Cameron and two senior officials at Scotland Yard resigning so far. Murdoch, his son James, and Rebekah Brooks — formerly chief executive of News International and editor of the now-closed News of the World tabloid — are due to answer questions in Parliament this afternoon.