The Register

Researchers warn over new Uiwix strain Miscreants have launched a ransomware worm variant that abuses the same vulnerability as ‪the infamous WannaCry‬pt‪ malware.…

Bottles benchmark battle backlash Analysis Infinidat recently ran a benchmark in which it claimed to have beaten EMC and Pure systems.…

Redmond chucks a lifeline. Not to you, to Big Box Co Dell EMC will release a four-node Azure stack. This potentially places Microsoft's cloud-in-a-can within reach of the SMB. The subscription model thing could get in the way.…

Breach of contract bustup could block sale of Tosh's chip unit Updated WDC is taking Toshiba to an arbitration court process, potentially blocking Toshiba's sale of its Memory Business, which owns Toshiba's share in a flash foundry joint venture with WDC.…

GPU-flinger Nvidia offers cops artificial intelligence HPC blog Not long after the news that UK cops may use artificial intelligence to make decisions on custody, Nvidia was showing off AI-for-cops at its GTC event – except this time it's the vehicular sort.…

First flight of Orion capsule atop Space Launch System slips from 2018 to 2019 NASA will miss its deadline for the first flight of the Orion capsule and the Space Launch System, with the launch moved from 2018 to 2019.…

People can't be bothered to recount crashes, so machines are here to help Auto-completion systems that attempt to finish your sentences when typing text messages or search queries can be a mixed blessing. Often, they save time. But they can also get in the way when they make incorrect guesses about intended input.…

Miscreants downgrading firmware to vulnerable QTS boxen QNAP has issued a critical-rated warning for devices running its QTS operating system.…

VMUGs placed under new Dell umbrella without consultation VMware's user groups are fuming at being brought under Dell's wing without consultation, and some group leaders are considering action against the leaders of the organisation overseeing the groups.…

Behold the deliberately-not-mighty Samsung Z4 and the Android ascendancy Anyone hoping that Samsung would use its Tizen operating system to shake up the mobile market has again had their dreams dashed, after the company emitted a for-n00bs phone running the OS.…

The way you spin the loo paper roll exposes your business Japanese boffins have measured the spin-speed of toilet rolls to work out who's on the loo.…

You know the drill: patch fast or cry slowly It's a patch for vendors and developers, but it could be nasty: there's a bug in a Universal Plug'N'Play (UPNP), used in a wide range of black-box devices.…

Monday wrap: “kill switch” holding for now; new versions emerging; patch what you can In the midst of the ongoing WannaCrypt attacks, Microsoft has issued an unusually strongly-worded warning to governments around the world to quit hoarding vulnerabilities.…

Contractors weren't paid for weeks, now some have been paid four times Beleaguered Plutus Payroll has a new mess on its hands: after a fortnight during which its customers went without pay, some have now been paid too much.…

But Linux 4.12 rc1 made it out before Mother's day anyway, thanks to new kernel.org plan Linus Torvalds might just be a big softie after all. The Linux Lord, infamous for his occasional foul-mouthed criticism of those who don't meet his standards, has just popped out release candidate one for Linux 4.12 a day early so he could give his undivided attention to Mother's Day.…

That's still a lot of stuff – and we've summarized it for you Our weekly storage news roundups are threatening to become multi-page books.…

Three years of the US's top cop in action Analysis The firing of FBI Director James Comey came as a shock to almost everyone, not least to the man himself.…

The software hippies' minds are going to be blown over this one A question mark over whether the GNU GPL – the widely used free-software license – is enforceable as a contract may have been resolved by a US federal judge.…

Boffins share findings of strange alien world 440 light years away A strange, distant planet HAT-P-26b has an atmosphere full of water vapor, hydrogen and helium – and could change how scientists think of planet formation.…

All you need to know – from ports to samples Special report The WannaCrypt ransomware worm, aka WanaCrypt or Wcry, today exploded across 74 countries, infecting hospitals, businesses including Fedex, rail stations, universities, at least one national telco, and more organizations.…

Ability to screen callers, block people Coming Soon™ Amazon's voice-controlled assistant Alexa and its Echo devices now sport the ability to take your phone calls – so long as you don't ever plan on ignoring calls from anyone.…

Zuck's Open Compute Project stole our designs, claims Brit biz Facebook is set to be dragged before a jury next year to face allegations that its Open Compute Project is built on stolen server and rack technology.…

Judge Alsup denies Waymo arbitration request, refers case to Uncle Sam's legal eagles Uber may face criminal charges over its alleged theft of trade secrets from Google-owned self-driving car upstart Waymo.…

Alsup wants torrent-chasing biz to work that IP detector hard A grumble-flick studio will be blocked from lobbing copyright infringement claims at pirates until it proves its tools for identifying illegal downloaders work.…

EternalBlue now an eternal headache Updated Workers at Telefónica's Madrid headquarters were left staring at their screen on Friday following a ransomware outbreak.…

Dire warnings ignored, plea for unity heard Oracle has suffered an embarrassing setback in its plans for a modular architecture in Java 9.…

Oh-so-trendy infrastructure as code could save your bacon Infrastructure as code is a buzzword frequently thrown out alongside DevOps and continuous integration as being the modern way of doing things. Proponents cite benefits ranging from an amorphous "agility" to reducing the time to deploy new workloads. I have an argument for infrastructure as code that boils down to "cover your ass", and have discovered it's not quite so difficult as we might think.…

Docs use pen and paper after computers scrambled amid global outbreak Final update UK hospitals have effectively shut down and are turning away non-emergency patients after ransomware ransacked its networks.…

Fell at third x86 benchmark hurdle Mirror, mirror on the wall, which is the fastest x86 Java server of them all? HPE leads in two categories but lags far behind in another.…

Locky-style nasty will squeeze you for two whole bitcoins The Necurs botnet has been harnessed to fling a new strain of ransomware dubbed "Jaff".…

Meanwhile Britain is binning it. Well done, admirals The US Coast Guard is well chuffed with its new Scaneagle drone – the same drone that the Royal Navy is ditching later this year, seemingly for lack of funds.…

Fashion! Turn to the left... Fashion! Fashion! Consumers’ love affair with fitness bands looks to have run its course with smartwatches shaping up to be the preferred way to lose the tub.…

Body count of GDS folk grows bigger following arrival of Kevin Cunnington The director of Common Technology Services at Government Digital Service Iain Patterson has stepped down, adding to a growing body count of senior folk to have left since director general Kevin Cunnington took the helm.…

Want to join the party? Act now Events There’s just a few days left till we open the doors at Continuous Lifecycle London, our three-day extravaganza covering DevOps, Agile and Containers, but if you’re quick you can still snag a ticket.…

Also announces partnership with Cisco to throw £80m at London coverage Mobe operator O2 continued to splash cash on its 4G network in its final quarter results, with industry watchers believing it is moving at pace to complete its commitments before an IPO at the end of the year.…

Lucky duckies Google wants you to believe that free music on YouTube doesn't deter people from paying for the same music somewhere else. Pull the other one, it's got bells on, the music industry has replied.…

Israeli firm prepares for DevOps deluge Infosec firm CyberArk has bought Conjur, a provider of DevOps security software, for $42m.…

It's make-up time but nobody's kissing yet Top Western Digital and Toshiba execs are talking after brandishing legal daggers over who can do what in Toshiba's memory business sale.…

Third-party provider blamed Cloud-based password manager LastPass has resolved an issue that left Brits unable to reliably access the service between Tuesday and Thursday this week.…

Combining security and data protection Analysis Data protection and security player Barracuda is being affected by customers moving away from point products, and the resulting combined data protection plus security themes could mean other pure-play backup suppliers are going to be left behind.…

Wrestling with Google's machine learning framework Hands-on Occasionally a technology comes along that changes the way that people work. Docker has had a profound effect on how applications are deployed in the cloud, Hadoop changed how analysis of big data was done and the R language has disrupted the statistics market.…

Well it's sustainable ... it's a single source producer... Yep! Boutique massive outsourcing In an effort to overhaul its massive £2.3bn contract with Atos, the BBC has awarded its Enterprise ICT and Hosting Services contract worth up to £560m over eight years to... you guessed it, Atos.…

Fraudster: Is this Windows? And why is it looking up my IP address? On-Call Why look at that! Friday is upon us, which means it’s time for another instalment of On-Call, The Register’s weekly column in which readers share memories of being asked to fix odd stuff at unpleasant times of the day.…

Moving VMs in fleet of micro-sats for virtual geosynchronous satellites Last week we talked to a space startup that wants to let satellites run XenServer so they can run virtual machines, which sounded intriguing enough that we decided to learn more.…

Hmm, who has a conflict and IMSI catchers, we wonder An ongoing campaign of propaganda-texting Ukranian solders has, unsurprisingly, been attributed to Russian forces equipped with cell site simulators (IMSI-catchers).…

PHPMailer bug leads to remote code execution via HTTP The popular Vanilla Forums software needs patching against a remote code execution zero-day first reported to the developers in December 2016.…

Patch promised Users of Google's PHP API client: watch out for phishing attacks while Google patches a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in the code.…

Virtualisation for daredevils The next FreeNAS release candidate landed last week, hopefully to a better reception than the disastrous Version 10 launch in March.…

Brian, take a look at this ... Last December, Qualcomm said Windows 10 would soon arrive on the ARM architecture, and it's had its first demo.…

When do private companies dictate how we run national security? Federal MP Anthony Byrne wants to re-start the encryption debate in Australia.…