Did U.K. journalists use malware to spy on people?

The scandal that led to the demise of U.K. newspaper News of the World and to an investigation into the illegal methods used by journalists and editors in order to acquire information seems not to be limited to just phone hacking.

According to Graham Cluley, former Prime Minister Gordon Brown has stated that journalists have also hacked into the targets’ computers and infected them with malware in order to extract information.

“It was not the misconduct of a few rogues or a few freelancers but, I have to say, lawbreaking often on an industrial scale, at its worst dependent on links with the British criminal underworld,” he claimed at the debate held yesterday in the House of Commons.

His statement seems to back the speculations of two popular (formerly anonymous) sex bloggers whose identities were discovered and who were outed by journalists of The Sunday Times – another News International publication.

They believe that journalists emailed them Trojans hidden in attachments in order to gain access to their computers and discover their identities.