The Register

And America should stop worrying about balloons and focus on what's important Black Hat The head of the US government's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has extolled the ongoing relationship between America and Ukraine barely a year into a crucial security information sharing pact....

Being blasted with a missile and plummeting 60,000 feet can do a real number on hardware, it turns out DARPA wants to be ready the next time a foreign spy balloon does a tour of the US, so it's launching a program to figure out how to capture one and its payload instead of simply shooting it out of the sky....

No one will suspect such a trustworthy executable Black Hat There's a rather serious ransomware vulnerability in Microsoft's desktop operating system, according to research out this week. It's nigh undetectable, uses a fully legitimate workflow to encrypt files, and comes pre-installed on all new Windows systems: OneDrive....

Especially on Apple gear, uni team says A couple of techniques collectively known as TunnelCrack can, in the right circumstances, be used by snoops to force victims' network traffic to go outside their encrypted VPNs, it was demonstrated this week....

'We understand the risks involved in space systems, and have insurance' Satellite operator Viasat says problems with its first ViaSat-3 deployment have created unanticipated biz challenges that may disrupt commercial prospects in the short term....

This fight over IAP is getting, dare we say, unreal Apple gets to maintain its App Store monopoly, at least for now, after the US Supreme Court rejected a bid from Epic Games to lift a court-ordered stay that would force Apple to let devs go outside the App Store for processing in-app purchases (IAPs)....

A login, a PA trial license, and some good old hacking are all that's needed to nab SQL databases Black Hat Microsoft 365 guest accounts aren't nearly as secure as Redmond would lead customers to believe, as low-code security expert Michael Bargury demonstrated at Black Hat....

Slow and steady wins this race with users Black Hat Getting people to use multi-factor authentication is surprisingly tough - or unsurprisingly, depending on your opinion of IT users. In any case, GitHub is managing it by playing the long game....

High bandwidth comms experiment to fly with Psyche asteroid mission in October NASA hopes to launch a near-infrared laser transceiver to test a system that could one day be used to communicate with astronauts on Mars....

Prompt injection, data poisoning just to name a couple DEF CON Artificial intelligence is an equalizer of sorts between security defenders and attackers....

Grrrrrrr.... Why are you sending 15 bloody messages in 10 seconds? Stop pressing return Poll It was international coworking day this week, which quite a few corporates used to get people excited about coming into the office again....

Codenamed Riga after the venue for this year's GUADEC conference GNOME 45 has just graduated from alpha test to beta, and will see final release late next month. Here is what to expect....

Plus: British government's push to reform data protection is working against the cause Companies that monitor their employees should only do so after they consult with and get consent from the staffers they are watching or tracking....

A relationship forged in UK government IT continues to blossom Software magnate Larry Ellison is a leading contributor to the policy institute built by former UK prime minister Tony Blair....

It's a 'digital metaphor' that signals the sound of opportunity, apparently LogoWatch Indian tech services giant Infosys has launched a "sonic identity" that The Register's irregular marketing column Logo Watch feels compelled to cover because the outfit has described it as the "auditory equivalent of its blue visual identity and logo."...

Light from Earendel takes 12.9 billion years to reach Earth, and it's serendipitous the JWST can see it at all It was a little more than a year ago that NASA's Hubble Space Telescope spotted the most distant star ever observed: the 12.9 billion light-years-away Earendel....

Venture capital is helping Beijing arm and Washington wants that to stop US president Joe Biden on Wednesday issued an executive order restricting stateside investors from sinking their funds into Chinese firms developing certain technologies, as part of an effort to prevent such products being used by China's military....

Almost certainly based on a FOSS engine, but with tweaks for the nation's particular needs India's government has decided the nation needs an indigenous web browser and has launched the Indian Web Browser Development Challenge (IWBDC) to make it happen....

Seven ex-tweeps bring the receipts, as the kids say Twitter has been sued by seven former employees who allege they were discriminated against on the basis of sex, age, race, and/or for taking medical leave....

International laws needed 'to bring accountability' govt chief tells The Reg Black Hat Ukraine's cybersecurity boss Victor Zhora says he expects Russia's online attacks against his country - including cyber "war crimes" - will continue long after the physical war ends unless increased international pressure is applied....

It may actually be the anti-superconductor, quips one research team Enthusiasm over the purported room temperature superconductor LK-99 is waning further as more research teams are unable to reproduce the original findings. In fact, one at a US university has concluded it is not a superconductor at all....

It's like a nesting doll of security flaws AMD processor users, you have another data-leaking vulnerability to deal with: like Zenbleed, this latest hole can be to steal sensitive data from a running vulnerable machine....

3D printers beware, Biden's on the Build-Your-Own-Blunderbuss beat The Biden administration's crackdown on 3D-printed gun parts can be allowed to be enforced, at least temporarily, after the US Supreme Court voted to let the rule to stand....

When you can't even cat your telemetry safely, who can you trust? Black Hat Spend much time working in a command-line terminal and you're likely to have at least a passing familiarity with ANSI escape sequences. Those are the codes that can add color and other highlights to text, among performing other tasks, making your screen a little more easily readable....

Meanwhile, platform keeps paying creators a share of ad revenue, but without similar safety features The site formerly known as Twitter is trying yet again to lure advertisers back, this time with a series of brand safety concessions that allow the source of most the company's revenues to "curate the context" in which their ads appear....

If you're so smart, prove it by safeguarding our infrastructure Black Hat In a surprise announcement at the opening Black Hat keynote today, DARPA unveiled what it's calling an AI Cyber Challenge (AIxCC). That's a two-year competition to build protective machine-learning systems that can safeguard software and thus critical infrastructure....

It is with a heavy heart that we must announce that the boffins are at it again Black Hat Googlers have lately found not one but two more security vulnerabilities in Intel and AMD processors that can be exploited to steal sensitive data from a vulnerable computer's memory....

Lopsided solids promise applications in quantum mechanics and medicine Researchers have developed a method to construct solid objects that roll down pre-determined paths, which they reckon could have applications in quantum mechanics and medicine....

Operating expenses almost as high as actual turnover in latest quarterly numbers Rapid7 is initiating a restructuring process that will involve shedding 18 percent of its workforce after net losses widened over the most recent quarter....

We hope the World Peace Day statement was not written by ChatGPT Artificial intelligence is so overhyped right now that even the Catholic Church is wagging a finger....

IBM X-Force lead says yes Black Hat While MOVEit is just the latest example of a managed file transfer (MFT) tool being exploited by criminals to maximize the amount of data - and money -- they can grab, these types of attacks aren't going to stop anytime soon. From the miscreant perspective, they represent the perfect crime....

At least it was a blunder and not a hostile attack, unlike what happened to another UK public body this week A spreadsheet containing details of serving Northern Ireland police officers was mistakenly posted online yesterday, potentially endangering the safety of officers, given the volatile politics of the region....

What's new in the world of Irish Ubuntu derivatives It seems to be kernel update season out there. The current Ubuntu LTS gets a new kernel, Zorin OS 17 gets a new point release - and Mint announces two updated editions, coming really soon now....

A quick guide to Hacker Summer Camp Black Hat Another year, another Hacker Summer Camp - the collective phrase for BSidesLV, Black Hat, and DEF CON, the infosec conference trinity that traditionally takes place around about this time of the year in Las Vegas....

Rival to CoPilot and CodeWhisperer sees the Big G join the error-ridden robo-coding market Google on Tuesday announced Project IDX, an AI-infused cloud-based integrated development environment....

Approach follows successful contracts in the health sector US spy-tech firm Palantir launched a direct lobbying campaign targeting UK government departments, including the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)....

SoftBank CFO says news of float is imminent, suggests firm will keep a solid chunk UK-based chip designer Arm will be floated in September, and its biggest licensees will be among those bidding for big shareholdings on day one....

NXP, Infineon, Bosch each nab 10% stake in joint venture What does 5 billion of German taxpayer funding buy you? Certainly not domestic production of TSMC's leading-edge process tech....

Big Blue bakes in brainbox tech to get models running - because kids these days don't want a career in big iron IBM has, as promised, announced an imminent upgrade to z/OS, the operating system for its Z-series mainframes, and promised an infusion of AI enablers....

Also-ran service done in by changing market conditions in a post-pandemic landscape' Verizon has decided to send its BlueJeans video collaboration platform riding off into the sunset, as it were....

Alleged administrator cuffed in Indonesia, associate arrested in Japan, accused of selling fake Amazons for $60 INTERPOL has revealed a successful investigation into a phishing-as-a-service operation named "16shop" with arrests of alleged operators made in Indonesia and Japan and the platform shut down....

'I don't want China to get to the south pole first with humans and then say this is ours, stay out' NASA boss Bill Nelson says America is "in a space race with China" and wants its astronauts back on the Moon before anyone else - to make sure foreign states don't take control of water and other resources on Earth's natural satellite....

641GB of total memory ought to be enough for anybody (and their LLM) Less than three months after Nvidia's Grace Hopper superchips went into full production, CEO and leather jacket aficionado Jensen Huang this week took to the stage at SIGGRAPH 2023 to unveil an even more capable version of the silicon....

Downfall processor leaks, Teams holes, VPN clients at risk, and more Patch Tuesday Microsoft's August patch party seems almost boring compared to the other security fires it's been putting out lately....

Senator won't be PaLMed off as web giant eyes up healthcare industry Google is under pressure from a US lawmaker to explain how it trains and deploys its medical chatbot Med-PaLM 2 in hospitals....

Aww, c'mon, let us scrape your pages, we've got billions at stake OpenAI, the maker of machine learning models trained on public web data, has published the specifications for its web crawler so that publishers and site owners can opt out of having their content scraped....

Hey, breacher, leave those kids alone Data going back as far as nearly 20 years may have been stolen from the Colorado Department of Higher Education (CDHE) after ransomware extortionists breached the government body's IT systems....

The calamity capsule won't be ready to fly until March 2024, and even then a launch date hasn't been ironed out Boeing has thrown in the towel on trying to launch Starliner to the International Space Station this year, and is now targeting the first half of 2024 for the calamity capsule's first crewed flight....

Education buyers ignore campaign group's intense criticism of device's lifespan, 'expect expiration dates for milk, not tech' Chromebook shipments are back in the black - just - and makers of the hardware have the US education sector to thank where buyers ignored a campaign group's recent intensive criticism of the tech's lifespan....

CRM giant fails to get Backpage.com case thrown out on appeal Salesforce is set to face allegations in court that it knew its software was being used by a sex trafficking organization, following an appeal ruling....