The Register

What kind of OS can be hijacked by clicking a link at just the right time? Microsoft's In this week's Patch Tuesday Microsoft alerted users to, among other vulnerabilities, a flaw in Windows Installer that can be exploited by malware or a rogue user to gain SYSTEM-level privileges to hijack a PC....

Dedicated support to be assembled to prevent cyberattacks, IT outages, and bad weather from affecting availability From today, the UK is designating datacenters as critical national infrastructure (CNI). As a result, the sector is expected to get special government support designed to prevent negative economic impacts of IT outages like CrowdStrike's, cyberattacks, and extreme weather events....

'Brilliant' team performs electrical balancing act to keep probe pointed at Earth The tenuous power situation onboard the veteran Voyager 1 spacecraft has required engineers to perform a delicate balancing act while switching between thrusters as fuel lines gradually become clogged....

It could lead to a costly BEC situation Palo Alto's Unit 42 threat intel team wants to draw the security industry's attention to an increasingly common tactic used by phishers to harvest victims' credentials....

It's quite a long way from ready - but it's clearly visible in the distance The latest version of System76's Ubuntu remix is available, but it's not finished by any means. The new Rust-based desktop is somewhat usable, though....

Academically interesting technique for poking holes in paywalled tech specs An anti-piracy system to protect online video streams from unauthorized copying is flawed - and can be broken to allow streamed media from Amazon, Netflix, and others to be saved, replayed, and spread at will, we're told....

Augmented reality meets warped reality A defense ministry official from Belarus has claimed augmented reality game Pokemon GO was a tool of Western intelligence agencies....

The Shinkansen have operated without fatalities for sixty years - how hard can it be? One of Japan's major passenger railway operators announced plans on Tuesday to bring fully automated bullet trains into service by the mid-2030s....

Union alleges work conditions are like solitary confinement and violence is common at Tamil Nadu plant Workers at a Samsung Electronics plant in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu have been on strike since Monday, disrupting production as they fight for wage hikes, better hours, and an end to a no-union policy....

Would paying a ransom - or better security - have been cheaper and safer? A US healthcare giant will pay out $65 million to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by its own patients after ransomware crooks stole their data - including their nude photographs - and published at least some of them online....

AI ROI? Jensen Huang claims infra providers make $5 for every dollar spent on GPUs Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has attempted to quell concerns over the reported late arrival of the Blackwell GPU architecture, and the lack of ROI from AI investments....

No class: Black Suit ransomware gang boasts of 200GB haul from one raid Cybercriminals closed some schools in America and Britain this week, preventing kindergarteners in Washington state from attending their first-ever school day and shutting down all internet-based systems for Biggin Hill-area students in England for the next three weeks....

Mountain View backs startup Holocene, hoping to slash emissions costs Google intends to purchase carbon removal credits from a direct air capture provider to help offset its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, although the initiative isn't expected to kick off until the next decade....

You hate to see it The Meow ransomware group has grabbed the second most active gang spot in an unexpected surge in activity following a major brand overhaul....

Allegedly swiped more than 5.2M files and threatens to publish the lot Ransomware gang Hunters International reportedly claims to have stolen more than 5.2 million files belonging to the London branch of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), a Chinese state-owned bank and financial service corporation, and set a deadline of September 13 to release all the data unless demands are met....

This follows the tech giant's August plan to cut 12,500 jobs Dell reported a smashing quarter, and employees should be prepared for what that means: Layoffs....

Cluster of 131,072 Blackwell GPUs up for grabs starting H1 2025 Comment Oracle says it's already taking orders on a 2.4 zettaFLOPS cluster with "three times as many GPUs as the Frontier supercomputer."...

27 million Series C Preferred Stock due out on Friday 13 Hewlett Packard Enterprise is turning to investors to help raise upward of $1 billion to fund its expensive purchase of networking rival Juniper....

Toys launched from pram as Musk's rocketeers stamp feet over paperwork Faced with months of waiting for approval for the next Starship launch, SpaceX has gone on the offensive regarding the red tape surrounding the process and the ongoing environmental assessment....

A really big oh sh*t moment, for sure For C-suite execs and security leaders, discovering your organization has been breached, your critical systems locked up and your data stolen, then receiving a ransom demand, is probably the worst day of your professional life....

Price rises, uncertainty after Broadcom takeover forcing users to look elsewhere for virtualization needs Research published by Civo indicates that more than half of VMware customers are considering leaving the platform under Broadcom's ownership....

22H2 and 21H2 holdouts about to be dragged to 23H2 Microsoft has warned that a forced update is on the way for Windows 11 21H2 and 22H2 users still clinging to the past....

Unlike in London, foul play isn't suspected The UK's National Health Service's (NHS) capability to deliver pathology services is taking another beating, with a critical incident declared this morning at two hospitals in England....

What happens at Black Hat... While trying to escape the Las Vegas heat during Black Hat last month, watchTowr Labs researchers decided to poke around for weaknesses in the WHOIS protocol. They claim to have found a way to undermine certificate authorities, which the world trusts to keep the internet safe by verifying the identity of websites....

How kind. Now how about looking at the corporation tax bill... Those kindly philanthropists at Amazon Web Services (AWS) plan to invest 8 billion ($10.4 billion) on datacenters in Britain between now and 2028, a move welcomed by the UK's finance minister who tried to take credit and spin it as part of the country's economic revival....

ISC2 argues security training needs to steer toward what hiring managers want The shortfall between the number of working security professionals and the number of security job openings has reached 4.8 million - a new high, according to cyber security non-profit ISC2....

Service with endless scalability, at least that's the plan Enterprises that need to worry about compliance have yet another fresh option, as Civo enters the appliance game with its FlexCore private cloud solution....

Ofcom research shows TV remains more trusted news source in social media age TV has lost its crown as the most popular source of news in the UK, according to research from Ofcom....

Brush up on your Delvish' - the lingo that flatters LLMs into a sort of submission Despite growing evidence that generative AI creates more work for humans than it saves, organizations are deploying it in frontline roles like customer service chatbots and CV-screeners....

Alternaleaf now has an outsized tech team, a build-not-buy mentality, and a love of FOSS When Myles Lawlor took the job as chief technology officer at Alternaleaf, Australia's largest online alternative health clinic, he started calling industry contacts to talk about the startup's tech needs - and they would hang up on him....

Trying for 3 grams, only 880 tons to go! Video On Tuesday, a robot began entering the Unit 2 reactor at the defunct Fukushima nuclear power plant, in an attempt to retrieve a tiny piece of the fuel that melted down in 2011....

Minister reckons dedicated cops necessary to protect digital transactions India has announced a plan to train a specialized wing of 5000 "Cyber Commandos" in the next five years, as part of its efforts to address cyber crime....

Foxcon and Sharp imagine a sofa and television in a connected electric van Japanese electronics giant Sharp and its majority stakeholder, Foxconn, have unveiled an electric vehicle that features, among other mod cons, an "extended living room."...

CISA wants you to leap on Citrix and Ivanti issues. Adobe, Intel, SAP also bid for patching priorities Patch Tuesday Another Patch Tuesday has dawned, as usual with the unpleasant news that there are pressing security weaknesses and blunders to address....

Isn't saying how much they'll cost or when they'll fire up Oracle is going nuclear over growing demand for AI datacenters, and that's not a metaphor for Larry Ellison's mood....

Chinese giant claims lithium batteries exploded, now one server hall is waterlogged At least a portion of Chinese web giant Alibaba's online services have been disrupted by a fire at a Singapore datacenter following what's said to be an Li-ion battery explosion....

Correction, no one wanted - well, except perhaps these patent filers at Ford Someday soon, if Ford has its way, drivers and passengers may be bombarded with infotainment ads tailored to their personal and vehicle data....

Chatbots, generative models 'in many ways the next step in the surveillance economy' Web browsers now commonly sport AI services provided by on-device or cloud-based models. However, a few holdouts remain convinced it's a bad idea....

Duo accused of stealing $3.2B of 20nm tech and secrets Two former Samsung employees have reportedly been arrested in South Korea on suspicion they stole more than $3.2 billion in intellectual property to build their own chip factory in China....

AI infra startup serves up Llama 3.1 405B at 100+ tokens per second Not to be outdone by rival AI systems upstarts, SambaNova has launched inference cloud of its own that it says is ready to serve up Meta's largest models faster than the rest....

Not even the venerable expertise of the US Space Force is enough to push progress Despite more than two decades of work, the US military's GPS modernization efforts are still so muddled that uninterrupted operation of a secure network of GPS satellites could be at risk....

Kyndryl survey suggests there's life in big iron yet Even mainframes can't escape the AI bug, with a report finding that big iron is becoming a prime candidate to host and run AI workloads, while enterprises are increasingly integrating their mainframes with modern infrastructure rather than seeking an off-ramp....

Post-IPO chapter ends after SQL biz shed jobs, products in bid to find buyer A private equity biz has succeeded in its takeover of MariaDB 18 months after its disastrous IPO....

Analyst suggests Redmond's internal distro may one day fly the coop Azure Linux is Microsoft's take on the open source operating system. It is primarily used for internal purposes, but could it become (yet another) distribution option?...

Elderly people report the greatest losses The FBI just dropped its annual report examining the costs of crypto-related cybercrime, painting a predictably grim picture as total losses in the US exceeded $5.6 billion in 2023 - a 45 percent year-on-year increase....

Final judgment handed down by Court of Justice of the European Union Following an eight-year legal tussle, Europe's highest court has ruled in a "final judgment" that Apple benefited from massive tax breaks after Ireland contravened EU state aid rules....

Xanadu release also adds a Pro tier, along with lots more AI SaaSy workflow vendor ServiceNow has opted for a different database to back its applications, and will introduce it this week along with the new "Xanadu" release....

Plus: CTO Larry says Big Red uses hardware 'efficiently' but 'labor sparingly because labor is a security risk' Oracle beat investment analysts' estimates with a Q1 revenue haul of $13.3 billion, up 7 percent year-on-year, a feat one market watcher chalked up to "several large deals being signed" in the period....

Altitude record within grasp and in-house spacesuits to be put through their paces SpaceX has launched the Polaris Dawn mission, which is set to surpass the altitude record set by Gemini 11 and feature a commercial spacewalk using SpaceX-designed Extravehicular Activity (EVA) spacesuits....

Users warned to get off 3.x releases as support ends The Apache Software Foundation Cassandra project has released the 5.0 iteration of the wide-column store database boasting new features to improve vector search, a Java update and enhanced performance....