The Register

It's all thanks to this year's 'unsually wonky' polar vortex The hole in Earth’s ozone layer is the smallest it has ever been since scientists discovered the puncture nearly 35 years ago, according to NASA.…

But, but her emails! The US State Department has delivered its report [PDF] into Hillary Clinton's use of a personal email system and, amazingly enough, there wasn't anything scandalous nor classified on it at the time.…

Show me the money. No, really, show me the actual money iFinex, the parent company of crypto-currency exchange Bitfinex, is seeking subpoenas in its quest to recover more than $880m in missing funds.…

Try not to save files to your Windows PC called cmd.exe or regedit.exe Video A flaw in the Trend Micro Anti-Threat Toolkit can be exploited by hackers to run malware on victims' Windows computers.…

Netizens' traffic flowing out of box could have been sniffed by miscreants Analysis NordVPN spent today attempting to downplay a security breach in which someone sneaked into one of its servers for purposes unknown.…

Quickfire Windows 10 Fast Ring release ends a busy week at Microsoft Roundup It was a busy week in Redmond as Microsoft geared up for its November Ignite shindig – new Windows 10 builds were flung, Azure capacities increased and Teams got a fresh feature... hold music.…

Dutch agreement should be extended to entire bloc, says statement The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) has expressed "serious concerns" over whether the contractual terms of agreements between EU institutions and Microsoft, for use of products such as Windows and Office 365, is compliant with data protection rules.…

Researchers find nefarious uses for Google Home and Amazon Alexa devices Google Home and Amazon Alexa can easily be hacked to eavesdrop on users or extract information by asking questions that appear to come from each smart speaker provider, according to researchers.…

Software used by millions not compromised this time, says biz On Monday, security biz Avast said it believes some of its credentials were stolen and abused in an unsuccessful attempt to subvert CCleaner, a file cleanup utility that it acquired in 2017.…

Wikileaks founder said to be frail, labours to confirm name and date of birth An emotional and clean-shaven Julian Assange has appeared in court to request more time and resources to prepare his defence against extradition to from the UK to the US on espionage charges.…

New three-year agreement to pull S/4HANA customers into Azure SAP and Microsoft have linked arms as part of SAP's "Project Embrace", a collaboration with Azure, AWS and Google Cloud Platform aimed at migrating the German firm's customers to the public cloud.…

Research blames 'culture of trust' for weak fraud protections UK charities are misjudging the risks of fraud, according to research from the Charity Commission and the Fraud Advisory Panel.…

Only really, really little astronauts need apply With launchpads in New Zealand and (soon) the US, small-sat flinger Rocket Lab toasted a ninth successful launch of its Electron rocket by taking aim at destinations beyond Low Earth Orbit.…

Missing Google already? Huawei has admitted that US sanctions are hurting its mobile phone business as it struggles to find alternatives to Google's software suite.…

Buried on Friday PM, just before pub o'clock Among the daily two-dozen or so government updates on Brexit progress slipped in as everyone went to the pub on Friday were a bunch considering the impact on copyright and intellectual property.…

Security biz to slurp Aussie compliance outfit Infosec giant Trend Micro is buying Australian compliance biz Cloud Conformity for $70m to help customers check the configuration of their fluffy white services – one of the major causes of cloud security breaches.…

You know my stats don't lie and I'm starting to feel it's wrong Action Fraud (AF) is referring fewer computer misuse cases to police investigators despite official statistics showing nearly a million offences were reported last year.…

Mats Järlström's fight shows you never cross an engineer Exclusive A Swedish engineer's umbrage at a traffic ticket has led to a six-year legal fight and now a global change in the speed with which traffic light signals are timed.…

Russian-backed cell's Middle East campaign pretended to be of a Persian persuasion British and US spies have blamed Russian hacker group Turla for masquerading as Iranian hackers to launch recent attacks mostly on government systems in the Middle East.…

At least it'll wipe clean Update Readers anxious for an update on the health of the wobbly Samsung smart fridge currently squatting in UK retailer John Lewis's Oxford Street store will be interested to learn that a culprit has been fingered.…

'At the exact moment you get curious about getting involved in cybercrime, you get a little tap on the shoulder' What's the best way to stop young gamers slipping into a life of cybercrime? Google ads from the cops, apparently.…

'I wonder what our users are surfing for… Oh' Who, Me? Welcome to Who, Me?, The Register's weekly confessional of sins, smut and surfing from the seemingly infinite pool of reader misdeeds.…

All in a week's work Roundup Just in case you're addicted to the world of AI, here's more news beyond what we have already covered this week.…

Help us understand your day-to-day challenges and triumphs with this reader poll Survey So much of the misery inflicted on customers by financial institutions is caused by disjointed systems and clumsy hand-offs between departments.…

Plus, new allegations in Iran and American hacking war Roundup Here's your Register security roundup to kick off your week.…

Hint: It rhymes with 'throwing' as lawmakers baulk at lobbing an unknown amount of cash into the 2024 lunar bonfire NASA brought a smile to faces of Boeing shareholders this week with the announcement that it would be ordering 10 Space Launch System (SLS) core stages from the US aviation giant for Artemis rocket launches to the Moon. Although paying for the things could be tricky.…

Vatican coders exorcise API gremlins but, we must confess, they missed one little monster.... Exclusive The technology behind the Catholic Church’s latest innovation, an electronic rosary, is so insecure, it can be trivially hacked to siphon off worshipers' personal information.…

Always-on, always-recording, always-analyzing gear mulled America's border cops are considering adding facial-recognition technology to body cameras worn by agents.…

Redmond's sign-on system is so secure, nobody can get in Microsoft is battling to fix its knackered multi-factor authentication system that today blocked customers from logging into their Microsoft 365 and Azure services.…

Oracle co-CEO, and ex-HP boss, dies aged 62 after stepping aside for health reasons Obit Long-time Oracle co-CEO Mark Hurd died this morning. He was 62.…

Senator Ron Wyden's on the warpath with 'Mind Your Own Business Act' A proposed law bill in the US aims to give regulators genuine powers to go after companies that fail to protect citizens' privacy up to and including jailing bosses.…

Heat probe tentatively resumes journey 5m into the red planet There was good news for Martian miners this week as NASA's stuck mole began making progress into the red planet's soil once more.…

Third new senior health role in 4 months. Cough and say arrrrgh Google's parent firm made its third big health hire in four months yesterday in the form of Karen DeSalvo, a one-time Barack Obama administration official.…

It's like reinventing the steering wheel... so they say Google has hit back at US president Donald Trump in the never-ending legal spat over its use of Oracle's Java code in the Android mobile operating system, urging the US Supreme Court to judicially review an appeal court's 2016 ruling against it.…

SQL Object Explorer, SQLCMD and more IntelliCode arrive for VS Code Microsoft's determination to foist on the world ever more ways of connecting to SQL Server has continued unabated with a major update of the mssql extension for the ubiquitous Visual Studio Code.…

Ofcom: Ahem. Just check our website The tossing away of user-generated content on Yahoo!'s long-running Groups site on Wednesday was not just bad news for all the hardcore users who are about to lose all their precious things stored there. Many were quick to point at telcos, who were using Yahoo! Groups to manage phone number assignments.…

Serverless Computing London takes you deep into Lambda, Azure, and more Event If you’re looking for a thorough grounding in serverless computing, or just want to kick your existing experiments into a higher gear, why not join our workshop day at Serverless Computing London next month.…

Yes, you read that right. Plus they spent £2.2m on failed AV policy The UK government could use facial recognition to verify age "so long as there is an appropriate concern for privacy," junior minister for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Matt Warman has said.…

That's 'Capability Hardware Enhanced RISC Instructions' University of Cambridge researchers and UK industry bods have been tossed £36m from the UK government to support their work with Arm to strengthen security by improving memory protection.…

Briefly had screen recording feature too Sextortion is bad. Malware is bad. Spam is bad. Unhappily for a French ISP's users, online crooks combined all three in a hideous attempt to extort cash with custom malware that records their on-screen doings, according to infosec researchers.…

Used by the elderly in M2M connections and eCall services In the dash to move everything to next-generation services, mobile operators mustn't be too hasty to switch off 2G, a report by industry bodies has warned.…

Chipzilla's keeping mum ... Canalys Channels Forum There's still no light at the end of the tunnel for PC makers as Intel's CPU constraint – a problem that showed up in anger 13 months ago – is on course to continue for another couple of quarters.…

Up to £1,700 for something that won't outperform its cheaper Pro 7 stablemate Hands On The Register dropped into Microsoft's flagship London store to rake a talon over the company's latest Surface gizmos and cop an eyeful of hardware head honcho Panos Panay fondling the Neo and Duo.…

It's cool to be retro Something for the Weekend, Sir? I wish to be recycled.…

Ever been tempted to administer a jolly good thrashing to Windows? On Call Join us in celebrating another week on Earth with a dive into the bulging bag of Register reader tales of user misadventures, misunderstandings and mindless violence in our regular On Call feature.…

Tune in online, join us with a panel of experts Webcast Finding and retaining the best developers is always a tall order. It’s no surprise that smart organisations strive to make the most of their workers’ valuable time, as barrages of projects compete for their attention.…

Ignore the overhead, enjoy Site Isolation – a defense against side-channel attacks Last year, Google deployed Site Isolation in desktop versions of its Chrome browser as a defense against CPU side-channel attacks like Spectre. The technique renders websites in separate processes to prevent one from interfering with or snooping on another, augmenting browser sandboxing defenses.…

You could say the US has... stiffened its defenses. Get it? Sti – OK, you got it The US Strategic Automated Command and Control System (SACCS) has reportedly replaced the ancient eight-inch floppy disks it uses to store data on the US nuclear arsenal.…

There's a line somewhere and we may just draw it, says code-hosting biz GitLab today had a change of heart after facing withering criticism for directing employees not to talk politics at work and declaring it would do business with any customer not banned by law regardless of moral considerations.…

Whoever implemented this wasn't a star pupil. Smartphone is an eye-groan. Face off with tech. And so on and so forth Pixel 4 owners can unlock their smartphones with their faces even if they have their eyes closed. That's not good.…