The Register

How to avoid social engineering attacks? Employee training tops the list Be careful what you click on. Miscreants are abusing WhatsApp messages in a multi-stage attack that delivers malicious Microsoft Installer (MSI) packages, allowing criminals to control victims' machines and access all of their data....

Congratulations, XxXh4xx0r420xXx, you can now use that account in your professional life, too If you're embarrassed by your Gmail address but haven't wanted to start a new account for fear of losing messages, we have good news. Ahead of Gmail's 22nd anniversary on Wednesday, Google says it is now letting US users change their account username....

Researchers say some targets correlate with cities hit by Iranian missile strikes Suspected Iran-linked threat actors are conducting password-spraying attacks against hundreds of organizations, primarily Middle Eastern municipalities, in campaigns that security researchers believe may have been aimed at supporting bomb-damage assessment following missile strikes....

Big Red declines comment as reports point to layoffs in the thousands Oracle laid off thousands of employees on Tuesday as it ramps spending on AI infrastructure projects internally and with major technology partners....

Oopsy-doodle: Did someone forget to check their build pipeline? Would you like a closer look at Claude? Someone at Anthropic has some explaining to do, as the official npm package for Claude Code shipped with a map file exposing what appears to be the popular AI coding tool's entire source code....

Sounds like an excellent time to start honing your Debian skills Exclusive An internal memo dispatched by senior execs at Red Hat suggests the software biz is starting to push AI tooling within its Global Engineering department. RHEL may be about to get some Windows 11-style "improvements."...

CMA to assess whether the company's terms unfairly favor Azure over rival platforms The UK's competition watchdog will investigate Microsoft's business software ecosystem over concerns that its licensing policies reduce competition in the cloud market....

No risk to ISS or Artemis, but not ideal for operator peace of mind Starlink satellite 34343 has suffered an "anomaly on-orbit," spraying debris at an altitude of approximately 560 km above Earth....

Perseverance found the minerals in an ancient river channel, but researchers say geology may still beat biology A team of scientists in the US have discovered nickel compounds in Martian rocks, in an arrangement similar to organic carbon compounds understood to be formed by living organisms on Earth....

The 13-year sales vet closed two deals worth $27 million, but ServiceNow has nullified" his compensation saying he overachieved" his quota. ServiceNow is refusing to pay a salesman commissions on more than $27 million in sales, telling the 13-year veteran of the company that he "overperformed" his quota and insisting that instead he sign paperwork that retroactively reduces the commission amount, according to a federal lawsuit filed by the salesperson. ServiceNow has denied all his claims....

Weren't these supposed to be 'atypical'? Microsoft is preparing another out-of-band update to address its latest problematic update following reports of installation errors....

Chip shipments overtake boards and modules as industrial demand grows, raising questions about hobbyist roots Raspberry Pi has reported impressive revenue and profit growth, but its hobbyist origins risk taking a backseat amid soaring semiconductor shipments....

Cores it's got what agents crave Interview In recent weeks, the likes of Nvidia and Arm have revealed CPUs designed expressly to run AI agents like OpenClaw....

Yep, you read that right. And there's no official Linux client from Google Canonical has just released the beta of the next Ubuntu LTS - but what's grabbed the attention of many is that it features GNOME 50 as its default desktop environment. And GNOME 50 no longer supports Google Drive....

Unexpected quota drain prompts complaints, breaks automated workflows Users of Claude Code, Anthropic's AI-powered coding assistant, are experiencing high token usage and early quota exhaustion, disrupting their work....

'Converting AI capability into sustainable, auditable revenue remains a challenge' says PwC survey Software companies are leaving money on the table because their core financial systems haven't kept pace with the way they sell pay-per-use services, which often now incorporate AI capabilities....

Hijacked maintainer account let attackers slip cross-platform trojan into 100M-downloads-a-week Axios One of npm's most widely used HTTP client libraries briefly became a malware delivery vehicle after attackers hijacked a maintainer's account and slipped a remote-access trojan (RAT) into two seemingly legitimate axios releases, in what's being described as "one of the most impactful npm supply chain attacks on record."...

Aimed at blind tablet users, although it's winning sighted fans too TapType is a new Android keyboard that's invisible. You can't see it - but that's OK, neither can its developer nor some of its target users....

Inventor Bjarne Stroustrup argues feature is neither minimal nor viable The ISO C++ committee (WG21) has approved the C++26 standard, described by committee member Herb Sutter as the most compelling release since C++11, and including Contracts, despite opposition to the feature from C++ inventor Bjarne Stroustrup, among others....

Chocolate Factory boffins have found a way to reduce AI's memory use, but don't assume that means less demand for DRAM The high cost of memory has sideswiped the technology industry, causing server vendors to admit their quotes are guesstimates and depressing sales of PCs and smartphones. Nobody is immune: Microsoft used the RAM panic as cover for fixing Windows 11's memory gluttony, and Sony suspended orders for compact flash and SD cards because it can't buy the chips to build them....

Regulator moving into an enforcement stance' and investigating Meta, YouTube, TikTok and Snapchat as millions continue to doomscroll Australia's eSafety Commission is moving into an enforcement stance" after finding that Meta, YouTube, TikTok and Snapchat haven't done enough to comply with the nation's social media minimum age (SMMA) obligation, which bans social media outfits from providing their services to children under 16 years of age....

Letting Copilot alter others' PRs was the wrong judgment call, says product manager Updated Microsoft has done a 180. Following backlash from developers, GitHub has removed Copilot's ability to stick ads - what it calls "tips" - into any pull request that invokes its name....

Check Point says outbound controls blocked web traffic but overlooked DNS OpenAI talks up data security for its AI services, yet Check Point says that ChatGPT allowed data to leak through a DNS side channel before the flaw was fixed....

Omdia says education, consumer, commercial, and public sector demand will weaken through 2026 US PC shipments are set to fall by 13 percent this year thanks to the ongoing memory and storage crisis, and things are not expected to get better until next year at the earliest, with budget PCs hardest hit....

Also, EU probes Snapchat, RedLine suspect extradited, AstraZeneca leak claim surfaces, and more infosec in brief The cybercrime crew linked to the Trivy supply-chain attack has struck again, this time pushing malicious Telnyx package versions to PyPI in an effort to plant credential-stealing malware on developers' systems....

But critics say stopping some engineering tests is not the sort of corner you want to cut America's telecoms regulator has unveiled new measures to speed the transition to modern high-speed networks, but critics argue the move could leave behind those in rural areas or with special needs....

Orion's four astronauts edge toward liftoff for humanity's first lunar voyage in more than 50 years NASA is preparing to send astronauts around the Moon, with the Artemis II mission countdown set to begin tonight....

Regulator says payments totaling 635K reached entity owned and controlled by a designated person The UK government has fined an Apple subsidiary 390,000 for breaching sanctions on Russia after it sent more than 600,000 to a developer linked to a designated entity....

Merger positioned to boost appeal of ERP giant's Business Data Cloud SAP is to acquire master data management and data integration specialist Reltio with the promise of helping integrate data from outside the vendor's broad application portfolio into its AI platform....

Researchers say attackers are already looting vulnerable boxes In-the-wild exploitation of a critical Citrix NetScaler bug has begun less than a week after disclosure, with researchers warning that attackers are already poking and pillaging vulnerable boxes....

Funding round comes ahead of planned IPO GPU-makers like Nvidia and AMD may dominate the AI infrastructure market, but there are still more than a few AI chip startups knocking around....

Could help break silos, but users should take wait-and-see approach to system limited to Microsoft DBs and DBaaS Microsoft's new Fabric Database Hub is a "partial solution" for enterprises relying on systems outside the vendor's portfolio, but within these confines, it could make databases more connected and manageable, say analysts reacting to the news....

KB5079391 pulled after some devices hit errors, adding to recent quality woes Microsoft has halted the rollout of a Windows update after some users encountered installation errors....

Torso on a trolley tries its hands in warehouse role That's one small step for Humanoid, or rather a short factory floor traversal. The UK-based robotics biz says it has completed a proof-of-concept test showing its rolling robot can be deployed in a production environment to help with automotive manufacturing....

Brussels notifying 'Union entities' whose data may've been snatched in websites breach The European Commission has admitted that attackers broke into its public-facing web infrastructure and siphoned off data in a bare-bones disclosure that answers the what but ducks most of the how....

Canny planning or dangerous compromise? Matt Brittin takes the hotseat at a pivotal moment Opinion The BBC has a new head honcho in waiting, the Director-General designate Matt Brittin. His job: helming one of the world's most famous and oldest international media brands, one with a vast and sensitive domestic position. His last job: President of EMEA Business and Operations at Google. You can imagine a greater culture clash, but you'll have to work at it....

Career-limiting stupidity and rudeness exposed, with terminal consequences Who, Me? The week before Easter may be a short one for many in the Reg-reading world, but that won't stop us from opening it with a fresh installment of Who, Me? It's the reader-contributed column in which you share stories of things you did at work that had interesting consequences....

Public policy professor says it will make America less secure but hits Netgear's lobbying goals The United States' ban on foreign-made SOHO routers won't improve security, and only makes sense as industrial policy disguised as cybersecurity," according to Milton Mueller, Professor at the University of Georgia's School of Public Policy and founder of its Internet Governance Project....

PLUS: Iran war may slow APAC IT spend; Toshiba, Mitsubishi, talk chip biz combo; Fusion plasma control networks; And more! Asia In Brief Staff at services giant DXC's Australian outpost will go on strike this week after 14 months of negotiations over a new pay agreement failed....

This week on the Kettle, we predict that AI software development won't make you want to fire your devs anytime soon kettle Tell an AI to write you a poem and it'll do it, just in a way that requires a human touch to perfect; the same goes for writing code....

And developers should be confident it won't kill the craft Secret CEO In 1991, when I was 16, a Norwegian Exchange student gave an inspirational performance of the Three Billy Goats Gruff, in the original Norwegian, at my high school talent night. She delivered this performance with such gusto that every word of her performance stuck in my mind and, to this day, I can recite the Three Billy Goats Gruff in Norwegian....

Alcohol turns up in most floral nectar, meaning pollinators are drinking tiny cocktails without ever getting drunk Bees and hummingbirds are effectively day-drinking on the job because their lunch is quietly fermenting....

The maker of Claude faces headwinds as it rushes to go public Anthropic, riding a wave of goodwill after resisting demands from the US Defense Department to soften model safeguards, is reportedly planning to go public as soon as Q4 2026....

Famous blue screens remind conference of security pros that this OS sometimes has bad days Bork!Bork!Bork! When is a bork not a bork? Perhaps when it's on a Microsoft stand at a US security conference....

New campus to include on-site power generation Bitcoin farmer turned bit barn builder Crusoe revealed plans to add 900 megawatts of capacity to its Abilene Texas datacenter campus on Friday to support Microsoft's AI ambitions....

Sycophantic bots coach users into selfish, antisocial behavior, say researchers, and they love it AI can lead mentally unwell people to some pretty dark places, as a number of recent news stories have taught us. Now researchers think sycophantic AI is actually having a harmful effect on everyone....

Farewell, Mac Pro: Increasing integration means the end of expandable computers Apple has discontinued the Mac Pro - but it's just the first of the tower computers to go. The rest will follow soon....

Ratepayer Protection Pledge is unenforceable without hard numbers, Warren and Hawley argue US senators are pushing to require datacenters and other large energy customers to report consumption, arguing the data is essential to hold them accountable to local communities....

Cross-signed code gets the cold shoulder as Redmond tightens trust Microsoft is removing trust for kernel drivers that haven't been through the Windows Hardware Compatibility Program (WHCP) in a bid to further secure the Windows kernel....

Private station hopefuls say ISS rethink is shaking confidence NASA's new Moon plan isn't the only policy shift causing concern. Parts of the commercial space industry are also uneasy about the agency's latest change of direction....