The Register

IT admins left with dead boxes blocking all traffic Updated A firmware update pushed to Barracuda firewalls has knocked out boxes in large firms and crippled networks, we're told.…

Draft executive order foresees new legal powers US President Donald Trump will order a 60-day report on the state of the nation's cybersecurity, complete with recommendations on whether new legal powers are required.…

Tech workers not able to keep up with new systems, we're told New York state officials say they are having to hire outside consultants to work on their systems because the state's own IT personnel lack the skills to manage newer technology.…

You don't want a taskbar? Fine, we'll take it out. OK, we'll put it back again Microsoft is said to be developing a cross-platform shell to bring the desktop Windows antiques to non-PC devices of different shapes and sizes.…

We have to get very, very tough on cyber and cyber warfare… and backups? Cockrell Hill, Texas has a population of just over 4,000 souls and a police force that managed to lose eight years of evidence when a departmental server was compromised by ransomware.…

Yeah... thanks for that, sniffs Ministry of Defence Military kit costs are going to skyrocket, according to the National Audit Office, which claims the Ministry of Defence now needs to slash an extra £5.8bn from its budget over the next 10 years.…

Still better than most of the press releases we receive An Italian couple have been nicked by counter-terror cops for, some, er, smearing letters they had sent to public figures.…

Cutting out the middle man Google has launched its own root certificate authority.…

The Cyber Cold War, everyone Prague has become the centre of cyber cold war intrigue with both Russia and the US seeking the extradition of a Russian hacker.…

Distillery needs a pagoda like a whole in the roof Devonians are up in arms after plans for a whisky, or possibly whiskey, distillery on Dartmoor were derided as “too Scottish”. Or possibly too Japanese.. Or maybe even too Irish.*…

Wall St downgrades stock – because buyers prefer last year's model The phrase "Peak Apple" has been used many times, only for the fruity firm to bounce back. Cupertino has amassed a vast fortune by ignoring the carping experts. However, the latest bout of iPhone fatigue might be more than a passing bout of flu. It's prompted one Wall Street watcher to downgrade Apple stock.…

How's that sacking 12,000 people thing going, Bri? Intel's profits dipped slightly in the last quarter of 2016, with income for the entire year down by 9 per cent.…

Get me the f**k off this mailing list, hundreds scream Hundreds of NetApp customers were peeved to find they had accidentally been added to the CC field of an email, resulting in a spamaggeddon of messages.…

Factivism vs Trump ¡Bong! While I was flying from Davos to DC for the inauguration of President Trump, a quiet revolution was being planned in the heart of the American countryside.…

Six inches of Tom Baker and Matt Smith for 'collectors' There already exist Doctor Who action figures but who wants anatomically correct when you get can six inches of chunky plastic?…

Lucky for some, but not this guy after missing trader scam Thirteen is certainly unlucky for Jason Tsai, one-time owner of distie Changtel Solutions UK – formerly ENTA Technologies (ETL) – as that's the number of years he's been barred from being a company director.…

That’s the way the cookie crumbles Something for the Weekend, Sir? At this stage of my life, I’m only good for quickies. So let’s make it quick, please, as I’m late for a meeting.…

£530m accounting scandal takes a chunk out of profits Profits at BT plunged by 37 per cent to £526m for its third-quarter, due to the fall-out from the firm’s accounting scandal in Italy.…

How hard can it be? Sysadmin Blog I have set myself a mission to create a cloud this year. Not a lab test version of something or other, but a real and usable cloud that I can sell to my clients. It's not built yet, but I intend to document my journey towards that end.…

The horror, the horror It has been 38 years since Apocalypse Now burst onto the cinema screen, and now Francis Ford Coppola says he wants to revisit the classic in computer game form – and wants you to pay for it.…

Breach-and-tell database is offline for good, claims post The LeakedSource data breach aggregator and look-up service has gone offline, possibly due to a police raid.…

Take an alien liquid, stir, add lasers, then wait to see what rises to the top Space agency NASA has created a test 10,000 times more sensitive than current technology to detect signs of life beyond Earth.…

50 shades of spankworthy security Bug hunter Craig Arendt has reported vulnerabilities in major eBook readers including those from Apple, Google, and Amazon.…

Laying on hands and weird stuff with feathers: some of you are very, very mean On-Call Welcome again to On-Call, the Friday slot we dedicate to readers' tales of odd jobs at odd times.…

Ransomware protection service opened Lockheed Martin, Adobe data to attackers Russian penetration tester Vladimir Ivanov has reported a bug in anti-ransomware backup service Code42 that could have seen attackers pilfer data from the likes of Uber, Lockheed Martin, and Adobe.…

NSX is now a billion-dollar business and vSphere refuses to slump Business textbook writers might do well to consider VMware's last year, as the company announced revenue and earnings that exceeded expectations, plus strong growth for new products, just a year after making a major change of strategy.…

Kill your antivirus, maybe keep Windows Defender Antivirus is harmful and everyone should uninstall it, so says recently liberated ex-Mozilla developer Robert O'Callahan.…

But Big Red's staying schtum about the new cloud services on its recently-updated roadmap Oracle has dribbled out a little more information about the future of Solaris, after last week quietly revealing a roadmap that replaced a planned version 12 with version “11.next” and then offering more detail about a planned move to adopt continuous delivery of OS updates.…

A Pew Research Center report sees doubt and disinterest in cybersecurity Approximately 28 per cent of Americans are "not confident at all that the federal government can keep their personal information safe," the Pew Research Center reported on Thursday, while also noting that many Americans fail to observe security best practices when online.…

Cloud jump helps SatNad and Co keep revenues gaining Microsoft is crediting growth in its cloud services with helping it to top expectations for the quarter.…

Investing for growth and hoping rising profits will follow Commvault is on the up and up, with sales rising nicely and third-quarter revenues up 7 per cent annually to $165.8m, although it did make a $100K loss.…

Shares slip in extended trading Google parent Alphabet reported "exceptional" fourth quarter growth, resulting in a 22 per cent increase in revenue compared to the same period a year ago, or 24 per cent year-over-year in constant currency.…

Closest setting to doom since the heady days of 1953 The Doomsday Clock, maintained for the past 70 years by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, has been moved to two and a half minutes from midnight following the election of Donald Trump.…

Joins Sony, LG and NEC, but Panasonic, Samsung, Sanyo and Toshiba still fighting Hitachi has agreed to pay $3.45m for its part in a massive price fixing conspiracy over lithium-ion batteries.…

It's been a mess ever since BlueMix took over, says user An extended outage over at IBM's Bluemix SoftLayer portal has customers fuming – and they say there is no way for them to tell Big Blue about it.…

Who won? Well, we're waiting – and waiting and waiting and ... Violin Memory's assets were scheduled to be put up for auction on Monday in New York. So far, no successful bids have been announced, although a buyer could be revealed by the end of the month.…

Europe's Privacy Shield shaken by US prez Analysis US President Donald Trump may have undermined a critical data sharing agreement between the United States and Europe that internet giants rely on to do business overseas.…

Database giant's contract slammed as 'draconian' and 'manifestly unfair' Oracle, which requires salespeople to agree to binding arbitration to avoid costly disputes in court, is unhappy that an arbitrator ruled against it. So it is suing one of its own employees, applications account manager Felicia Wilson, in a New York court to undo the arbitrator's $257,335.79 award.…

Charger seeks to drain bank accounts of unlucky 'droids Researchers say a piece of ransomware disguised as a battery app made its way into the Play store.…

Protect those baby pics and political rants with hardware two-factor auth keys Facebook is upgrading its login defenses by rolling out support for hardware security keys.…

Mark our words. First this uni campus, then the world RotM Students at Carnegie Mellon University have made a mobile goldfish bowl that the lucky fish can drive around by itself – and they've filmed it for posterity.…

Five years in the wilds and away from storage is enough for any man Industry grey beard Nick Thurlow has returned to NetApp to run the UK business half a decade after he quit.…

Spinners boosted by SSD sales +Comment Western Digital Corp, still digesting SanDisk, is selling more disk drives than arch-rival Seagate and appears to be doing a booming flash business as well, for now.…

Going underground That's more like it. Elon Musk is completely serious about building megatunnels under Los Angeles, buffing up his credentials as a real-life Bond villain. He's promised to start within "a month or so".…

If the next quarter goes their way, that is Get the champagne ready; Quantum might be facing its first annual revenue increase in 10 years – if the next quarter goes to plan.…

It's dead already, Congresscritters argue Americans will be stuck with the antiquated 1990s CableCARD access standard for a little longer. Republicans in US Congress yesterday urged the FCC to snuff out its radical (and secret) set top box proposal, which has been in limbo since November.…

Standard model of cosmology may be incorrect, say experts The latest measurement of the Hubble constant is higher than previous values, prompting scientists to believe there may be “new physics” beyond the standard model of cosmology yet to be discovered.…

To be fair, you might too. But you're not the most powerful man in the world President Donald Trump is still using a conventional Android phone to post on Twitter since moving into the White House.…

Speculation builds over root cause of 'Connectiongate' Video A video of the PlayStation 4 blackout has been captured by a Register reader, shedding more light on the console's mysterious display failures.…

Cheers, Redmond Changes that mean signing certificates for Windows can only be sold in hardware form – or from an as-yet undefined cloud-based "service” – from the start of February are likely to have a big effect on software development.…