The Register

Join us at MCubed and we'll put you in the picture Event If you’re thinking about doing machine learning, one of the first choices you’ll have to make is "what will I actually run on my machines?"…

But hey, the first result worked and you're a legend On Call Welcome back to On Call, The Register's weekly dive into the world of those who live in dread of the surprise pager or midnight phone jangle.…

Holes supposedly plugged, fnar fnar, but Pen Test Partners believes there may be more UK-based security biz Pen Test Partners describes group sex app 3Fun as having "probably the worst security for any dating app we’ve ever seen."…

As it emerges non-internet-connected election systems are actually connected to the internet Black Hat While various high-tech solutions to secure electronic voting systems are being touted this week to election officials across the United States, according to infosec guru Bruce Schneier there is only one tried-and-tested approach that should be considered: pen and paper.…

Apple expands bug bounties, and more from Vegas this week Black Hat Here's a quick summary of some important infosec happenings from inside and outside the Black Hat USA conference in Las Vegas on Thursday.…

Shocking current-affairs news: Cupertino idiot-tax operation hits resistance over harsh repair policy Apple appears to be discouraging owners of recent iPhones from having device batteries serviced by a third-party repair service, an exercise in market control that looks ill-timed amid growing scrutiny of potential anti-competitive moves by tech giants and pushback against limitations on repair rights.…

It's Microsoft so: Embrace, extend, something else beginning with ex? Microsoft's social code biz GitHub on Thursday said its automation system, GitHub Actions, will now play real nice with third-party continuous integration and continuous deployment tools, a duo better known among IT types by its stage name, CI/CD.…

Cortana: tell me a joke. No, I don't mean the terms and conditions... Microsoft emitted an update to next year's Windows 10, aka 20H1, last night, with some tweaked networking and the spreading of the creepier-than-you-might-have-realised Cortana to more Insiders.…

Come on, guys. Do some Seoul searching and break it up Japan has eased controls on exports of key chip manufacturing materials to South Korea – the first relaxation of strict measures introduced last month in an escalating trade war.…

Exploit allows any app to run with full local admin rights on Windows A security researcher has disclosed a vulnerability in Valve Corporation's Steam client, used by millions of Windows PC gamers, even though it has not been fixed because his report was rejected as "not applicable".…

STEM subjects already lose universities £1,400 per student Funding for scientific research could be in jeopardy if the UK government implements plans to cap tuition fees, peers have warned.…

Don't believe the numbers, say security watchers, it's worse than ever Black Hat Ransomware infections may be down, but only because attackers are getting better at targeting them.…

Moscow's 'sovereign internet' effort means new rules for the bad guys too Black Hat The introduction of Russia's Sovereign Internet rules is having an impact on the way criminal hackers around the world do business.…

No headphone jack, a 5G model and a whole lotta dollars Samsung surprised nobody by unveiling a pair of eye-wateringly expensive smartphones – the Galaxy Note 10 and Note 10+ – while talking up best buddy Microsoft at an event last night in New York City.…

Public sector bods blame users recycling logins Exclusive Transport for London's online Oyster travel smartcard system has been accessed by miscreants using stolen customer login credentials, The Reg can reveal, forcing IT bods to pull the website offline for a second day.…

We are letting the tech giants win, says Kyle Rankin Linux Journal has closed with "no operating funds to continue in any capacity", according to a notice on its site.…

Greased Field Service Lightning Cloudy CRM giant Salesforce has splashed $1.35bn acquiring Israeli software company ClickSoftware, its latest spending-spree purchase.…

And yes, broadband flinger appears to shift focus to hybrid Virgin Media has reported adding 130,000 premises to its £3bn full-fibre Project Lightning connections in its second quarter, bringing the total to 1.8 million.…

Over to you, Betteridge's law of headlines* Analysis As a nation, Brits feel starved of full-fibre connectivity and look hungrily at the availability of 1Gbps on the continent, says prime minister Boris Johnson. Except evidence suggests that they don't.…

Fears of cyber-hijackings? That's plane crazy, says Dreamliner maker Black Hat A Black Hat presentation on how to potentially hijack a 787 – by exploiting bugs found in internal code left lying around on a public-facing server – was last night slammed as "irresponsible and misleading" by Boeing.…

Now that's what we call a joint task force: Uncle Sam chills out, relaxes recruitment rules on drugs Black Hat America's crime-fighters, desperate to recruit white-hat hackers to collar spies and cyber-crooks, have been quietly and slightly relaxing the ban on hiring anyone who has used illegal drugs.…

Quiz Riverbed on software monitoring Webcast As modern businesses move to the cloud, software becomes more complex and more dispersed, and can degrade in an increasing number of ways. Companies can find maintaining a consistent level of service is an ever-growing challenge.…

Opt-in translations feature hands chats to contractors to fix up. Redmond says it's covered by fine print If you use Skype's AI-powered real-time translator, brief recordings of your calls may be passed to human contractors, who are expected to listen in and correct the software's translations to improve it.…

After what feels like months of drip-fed info, here comes some much needed competition in the data center world Chip biz AMD today, after months of teasing, officially debuted the second generation of its Epyc server processor family in San Francisco, promising performance, efficiency, throughput, and security improvements.…

Exploit an 3l33t zero-day and reverse-shell that backend DB proxy server... or simply pay this farmer off Black Hat Black Hat founder Jeff Moss opened this year's shindig in Las Vegas with tales of quite how odd the hacking culture in China is.…

Maybe, maybe not. These hack-in-a-box widgets are something to think about at least, says Big Blue Black Hat IBM's X-Force hacking team have come up with an interesting variation on wardriving – you know, when you cruise a neighborhood scouting for Wi-Fi networks. Well, why not try using the postal service instead, and called it "warshipping," Big Blue's eggheads suggested earlier today.…

Pipeline tooling for when you fancy a bit of Microsoft in your CI/CD Fresh from slurping $56m in series D funding, devops outfit CircleCI has brought its CI/CD tooling to Microsoft Windows.…

But this hardware is surprisingly easy to hack, block and control Bsides LV A satellite-killing debris field encircling the Earth isn't coming any time soon, but hackers working from Earth could help severely damage the planet's orbital traffic.…

Case settlement to be reheard for fresh decision An American appeals court has nixed one of Google's original legal settlements over its infamous privacy-busting Safari Workaround.…

The Register talks to Peter Beck about parachutes, elephants and helicopters Interview After SpaceX and Roscosmos announced plans to move into the burgeoning small satellite market, Rocket Lab upped the ante with details on how it would be making its own launcher, Electron, reusable.…

Want the Advanced Protection Program? You're going to have to sign in. Soz Google has extended its Advanced Protection Program to include users signed into Chrome.…

But still care about catching bent cops People in the UK are gawping at their gogglebox an average of three hours and 12 minutes per day – 49 minutes less than in 2012 – thanks to online streaming, according to a report from Ofcom.…

Septic tank struck, methane build-up makes toilet explode A lightning strike to a septic tank blew up a Florida couple's toilet over the weekend, sending shards of porcelain and who-knows-what into the bathroom wall.…

Larry Niven's wireheads aren't far off BSides LV In one of the most disturbing talks in all 10 years of Bsides Las Vegas, neuroscientists have warned that not only is hacking the brain possible right now, but it's also a lot easier than you may think.…

It's just not summer without a TITSUP* delaying travel, is it? It's not the summer holidays without an IT cock-up causing a major delay at UK airports, once again courtesy of British Airways.…

Some gripes at this stage, but the potential is there Hands On Container wunderkind Docker has released a preview of Docker Desktop for Windows Subsystem for Linux 2.…

Reg reader finds a use for the new London store while others struggle with fubar wireless Microsoft seems unable to catch a break with its Surface slab-tops: a software update appears to have broken Wi-Fi for some users, while bulging batteries cause grief for others.…

Your quick summary of news from the server room Roundup Register vultures and readers alike are off on summer vacation, or attending hacker comic con in the desert, right now, and yet the wheels of news keep turning in the data center world. So, for those still logged in, here's a quick summary of announcements from the server room this week.…

Including: Microsoft spins up Azure security lab, offers more bug bounty cash Roundup Before letting the IT staff clock out early this week, make sure they read up on the following security notices out this week.…

SWAPGS can be abused to siphon sensitive secrets from kernel memory, patches already available Spectre – a family of data-leaking side-channel vulnerabilities arising from speculative execution that was disclosed last year and affects various vendors' chips – has a new sibling that bypasses previous mitigations.…

Trojan devs give up after seeing hard work ripped off, copied between crooks BSides LV Life’s tough as a malware developer. If the cops or Feds don't collar you, your fellow scumbags will screw you over – or perhaps both will happen.…

Lid lifted on container toolkit's two million lines of code, 34 vulnerabilities peer out The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) today released a security audit of Kubernetes, the widely used container orchestration software, and the findings are about what you'd expect for a project with about two million lines of code: there are plenty of flaws that need to be addressed.…

Reely good news for cold storage fans Fujifilm and Sony have buried the hatchet over a patent dispute that crippled the global supply of LTO-8 tape media.…

Pakistani bloke extradited to US, accused of masterminding telco hack caper AT&T staff were bribed $1m to slip the codes to unlock two million smartphones to a gang operating out of Pakistan, US prosecutors have claimed.…

11m other leaked users' p-words hashed with SHA-1 Passwords were among the 23 million customer records siphoned from CafePress by hackers – and the site was using the less secure SHA-1 hashing algorithm to store half of its users' credentials.…

*Problem In Chair Not In Computer, says report Industry nonprofit the Cloud Security Alliance has published a report on the top threats to cloud computing, concluding that the biggest issues are caused by customers, not by the cloud "solution" providers (CSPs).…

Now you too can have a Soviet plaything as estate wound up As late Microsoftie Paul Allen's estate is gradually wound down, the gems from his collection of rare and historic aircraft are coming up for auction – including his personal two-seat MiG-29 Russian fighter jet.…

A busy week for Cape Canaveral Air Force Station The 45th Space Wing has a busy few days ahead of it as the team prepares for launches from SpaceX and ULA less than 48 hours apart from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.…

Amazon CTO not happy. Isn't it ironic... don't you think? While Amazon fumed over Microsoft's licensing changes, the gang in Redmond attempted to soften the blow a little by slicing the pricing of Azure Archive Storage.…

Top tips to defend against nation-state network intrusion Microsoft's Security Response Center has issued a bunch of recommendations for orgs to protect against nation-state network intrusion via insecure IoT devices.…