The Register

The 'VF' now stands for 'virtually f*cked' A hacker wiped every server and backup of VFEmail this week in a "catastrophic" attack, according to the webmail service.…

In Putin's Russia, internet logs off from you Russia is reportedly preparing to turn its internet into a nationwide intranet to thwart hacking attacks and similar aggression from the West.…

Oh, bother! Users can't bear the thought of censorship Condé-Nast-stablemate forum Reddit has slurped another $300m in a round of funding led by Chinese giant Tencent.…

An Arts Council for news? A UK government-backed review has decided against a punitive tax on Google and Facebook – but called for competition authorities to investigate their core business. It also wants a new news quango.…

UK Police Forces on Microsoft's platform have some new toys in their arsenal Britain's criminals must be quaking in their boots after hearing the news that tools to help UK plod solve crimes have been added to Microsoft's Azure cloud.…

Steve Hilton claims his boss fired him without just cause to avoid $20m severance payday A former DXC Technology exec veep sacked last summer refuses to go quietly: Steve Hilton has accused his ex-boss, CEO Mike Lawrie, of having a "toxic" management style that he claimed involved "verbally abusing" underlings.…

Document skirts around 'the fundamental issues involved' The UK government's 27-page blueprint to use biometrics "in no way did justice to the fundamental issues involved" in cops' increasing use of the tech, the chair of the Commons science committee has said.…

UK's Huawei handlers are proud of themselves The Huawei Cyber Security Evaluation Centre (HCSEC) has a giant banner hanging outside declaring its purpose to the world.…

90 days without a refuel The Ordnance Survey reckons it has succeeded where Google and Facebook failed, with the launch of a solar-powered drone fleet that will hover permanently high above Blighty.…

Imag-I-Nation Technologies (no, not that one) fesses up to breach affecting thousands A company that develops and supports software for consumer reports and background checks has admitted to exposing thousands of people's information to an unknown hacker.…

We bid farewell to the best kind of 16-bit hustler... Obit Dr Bernard L Peuto, the architect of the Zilog Z-8000 chip, has died.…

Complexity of project no excuse to do nothing, chides review The UK's National Health Service has been warned to plan tech investments carefully, address data governance and quality concerns, and boost staff training to ensure IT benefits rather than harms patients.…

...He's just a poor backup of a workload running virtually ♪ If you're wondering whether it's possible to protect vSphere virtual machines with no on-premises agents, arrays, appliances or software – and friend, who isn't? – here's something potentially for you.…

Huge hole hints at home world taking a pounding Pics, video Scientists believe they may have found a second meteorite impact crater lurking under ice sheets on Greenland.…

Ah, wait, the other kind of artificial President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday kickstarting the American AI Initiative, a strategic plan to keep the nation ahead of its competitors in artificial intelligence.…

Handy for smuggling expensive zero-days onto targets and executing them Updated Security researchers have found that Intel's Software Guard Extensions (SGX) don't live up to their name. In fact, we're told, they can be used to hide pieces of nasty malware that can silently masquerade as normal applications.…

US govt State Dept boss Mike Pompeo: We'll shut you out if you're using kit from Chinese maker US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says his department may punish countries that purchase hardware from Chinese telecoms giant Huawei.…

Dubsmash, Armor Games, 500px, Whitepages, ShareThis, and more said to be up for grabs for $$$s in BTC Exclusive Some 617 million online account details stolen from 16 hacked websites are on sale from today on the dark web, according to the data trove's seller.…

Oil, gas, maritime systems affected by latest bug findings Companies running a popular brand of industrial Ethernet switch are being advised to update their firmware ASAP following a series of bug disclosures.…

Seven-year battle could be finally coming to an end A seven-year fight over the introduction of .amazon top-level domains may finally be resolved this week with crunch talks in Brazil.…

'Doomsday scenario' unless devops crowd walks this way Aleksa Sarai, a senior software engineer at SUSE Linux GmbH, has disclosed a serious vulnerability affecting runc, the default container runtime for Docker, containerd, Podman, and CRI-O.…

Bonkers dust world colonization that was never going to happen definitely isn't going to happen The group trying to crowdfund a plan to colonization of Mars that was declared suicidal has shuttered its shop front.…

Accused hacker can write Reg headlines. Who knew? Lauri Love will find out whether he is getting his computers back from the National Crime Agency on 19 February, a judge ruled today.…

Plus: Cygnus freighter to spray more sats across the heavens As Elon Musk crowed over the performance of SpaceX's Raptor engine and Northrop Grumman's Cygnus departed the International Space Station (ISS), debris watchers were ruing the 10th anniversary of the first accidental hypervelocity satellite collision.…

Oh and by the way, there's a consulting reorg on the way Brand new Teradata CEO Oliver Ratzesberger wouldn't be drawn on headcount reduction in the legacy data warehouser's consulting group, but admitted realignments will be made to bag "megadata" customers.…

JESUS MOOOOOOOM The relationship between mother and son is a strange one. Sigmund Freud's "Oedipus complex" made all of psychology awkward, and mums haven't helped by cherishing and coddling their perfect little boys well into adulthood.…

Western Digital hard drive also among the spoils Accused computer hacker Lauri Love is in court today arguing with the National Crime Agency over whether the British government agency should return PCs they seized from him.…

JavaScript emulator gains audio support and proper '90s Doom The JavaScript incarnation of Windows 95 received a version bump last week, giving those trapped in the snow or stuck in the office a lunchtime of delight listening to the bleeps and bloops of yesteryear.…

Lad Media, The Lead Expert don't look so 'expert' now The bosses of lead-generation firms Lad Media and The Lead Experts have been slapped with four and six-year bans on forming companies respectively after they fell foul of direct marketing laws.…

Eben Upton talks to El Reg about hopes, dreams and solid starts The first Pi shop has opened its doors in Cambridge and, if the first weekend of trading is anything to go by, has done rather well.…

Latest data dribble from distant New Horizons reveals things are strange out there NASA's New Horizons probe mission has once again given boffins something exciting to think about. New data sent back to Earth has meant they'll need to rework our understanding about the shape of 2014 MU69 (aka Ultima Thule).…

But you'll love our sticker scheme... right? Interview The EU has not seen evidence that Huawei poses a threat to its internal markets – and says that even if it had, blocking the controversial Chinese company's products is up to EU member nations, not the political bloc.…

New Windows 10 build and Small Basic turns 1.0 Roundup Last week the headlines were dominated by Microsoft seemingly putting the boot into its own productivity suites and bashing its elderly browser. But of course there was plenty else afoot within the sphere of Redmond.…

NAS-ty: Strange activity sinkholes antivirus update checks Network attached storage maker QNAP's customers have reported being hit by a mystery issue that disables software updates by hijacking entries in host machines' hosts file.…

'Idiot? You're calling me a f*cking idiot?!' Who, Me? Once again, Monday has put an end to the weekend's fun – and Who, Me? is tagging along, as always.…

And more from the world of machine learning Roundup Here's a quick summary of recent AI news to kickstart your week beyond what we've already reported.…

Requirement threatens to break the bank To prevent a data grabbing snafu along the lines of Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal, Google is asking developers who use sensitive Gmail APIs to pay for a security audit that proves their apps play by the rules.…

Better to drink plenty of water, we reckon Beer before wine and you’ll feel fine; wine before beer and you’ll feel queer, as the old saying goes. Well it isn’t true, it doesn’t matter what order you down your drinks, you’ll be hungover all the same.…

All your extra bits and bytes of this week's infosec news in less than 5 minutes Roundup Here's a summary of more infosec news beyond what we've already reported this week – enjoy.…

It's something to do with the Mexican border wall Analysis When the Democrats took over the House of Representatives in America, one of the first things that the House Energy and Commerce Committee did was call a hearing on net neutrality. We had a familiar feeling of dread at the time.…

Arkansas is looking good, Kentucky not so much Analysis In what could prove to be an important turning point in the rollout of fiber across the US, this week the Arkansas congressional committee voted to repeal their state's prohibition on municipal broadband.…

'No evidence that any data has been accessed time' say Australian officials as fingers pointed at foreign spies The Australian Parliament has reset all passwords on the parliamentary computing network following an unspecified security incident.…

Publisher will take a long hard look, make sure it's not on a sticky wicket... OK, OK, enough National Enquirer publisher American Media Inc (AMI) today denied it blackmailed Amazon head honcho Jeff Bezos by threatening to leak his nude selfies if he didn't play ball.…

Workaround needed if you suddenly run into trouble with latest Linux OS update While the Redmond executioner was bringing the axe down on the neck of Azure Party Clusters, an Ubuntu security update has done the same to the Azure cloud's Service Fabric Linux Clusters.…

Snooping court says police kit can be covert surveillance tool Police's body-worn cams can be covert surveillance tools, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal has said.…

A bit last-decade, but there are improvements – and it's free! While Microsoft was upending the scorn bucket on its own productivity tools, The Document Foundation shoved out an update of LibreOffice, replete with user interface tweaks and improved Office compatibility.…

'We're hiring thousands' for digi revolution... yes, we've cut 14k in last year. Don't compare y-o-y, urges CEO, it's about q-o-q DXC Technology's trigger-happy CEO mentioned the word "hire" or "hiring" 27 times during last night's conference with financial analysts. It's almost as if Mike Lawrie was trying to make a point. As for his use of the term "digital" – he uttered it a full 78 occasions.…

Backup biz slurps security firm for $618.5m Online backup service Carbonite has inked a deal to buy Webroot for over half a billion dollars to help it fling cloud-based endpoint security at smaller biz.…

We're not convinced 'people who want to harm kids will follow the kid, not the watch' is a great comeback Kids' smartwatch-pusher Enox, whose Safe-KID-One watch was pulled by the European Commission, has hit back against the bad PR – with some rather unusual arguments.…

Microsoft: We know what we said then, listen to what we're saying now Oddly enough, for the second time this week, Microsoft has been spotted telling the world that its software is, er, not very good.…