The Register

Careful what you tell Azure: Redmond has given itself the right to spam your buddies Microsoft has updated its privacy policy and, for the first time, added a section devoted to “Enterprise Products.”…

The deal's not done but EMC events are already full of chat about Dell products The Dell/EMC transaction's yet to formally conclude, but the two companies are already starting to behave as one if the agenda for a forthcoming EMC event is any guide.…

Careful with that axe hack, Eugene Kaspersky Lab has bowed to the probably-inevitable and kicked off a bug bounty program.…

Iran's government suspected of cracking down on encrypted comms Black Hat An attack group known for rudimentary phishing scams and having operational security so bad their servers were popped by Check Point has compromised a dozen Telegram accounts and gained phone numbers for a further 15 million, possibly with possible state assistance.…

Switches need urgent attention, and UC kit needs cuddles to prevent crashes Some Cisco wireless routers patched in June have made it back onto sysadmins' sleepless night lists again.…

NATO analysis shows cyberwarfare is getting smarter and nastier Black Hat The ongoing conflict between Russian and the Ukraine has shown the increasing sophistication of state-sponsored hackers and the casualties of war have included some surprising victims.…

Gonna party like it's 1989 Classic Shell and Audacity downloads were booby-trapped with an old-school software nasty this week that knackered victims' Windows PCs.…

Your things can now talk to Azure without spilling secret things Microsoft has bumped up security for its Azure cloud platform by adding support for X.509 certificates for device-level authentication, and bagging an ISO integrity ticket.…

Big Blue subsidiary accused of fraud, shoddy IT policy IBM has found itself in the crosshairs of the US government after one of its subsidiaries has been accused of financial fraud.…

Tim Kelsey to head new Digital Health Agency The Australian government's love affair with digitisation experts from the United Kingdom continues, with former National Health Service (NHS) digital head Tim Kelsey made boss of the antipodean Digital Health Agency (successor to the National e-Health Transition Agency).…

Account-sniffing electronics hidden in cash-machine slots Black Hat America's belated move to EMV (Europay, MasterCard and Visa) chip-equipped cards won't be the panacea some had hoped. As it turns out, the cards are just as easy to clone as their magnetic stripe predecessors.…

Which genius thought it was a good idea to cheerily send messages without opt-in? Having managed to creep-out an awful lot of Australia with its high-handed, arrogant, tone-deaf handling of the 2016 Census, there wasn't much left for the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) left to foul up, right?…

History of the World in 100 Objects show gains 101st artefact The National Museum of Australia (NMA) has chosen Wi-Fi hardware as Australia's greatest contribution to world history.…

Independent review tears into ICANN board and staff In an extraordinary judgment, the organization that hopes to take over running the top level of the internet later this year has been slammed by an independent review as at best incompetent and at worst deliberately mendacious.…

Human curiosity will always trump anti-phishing schemes Black Hat Research by German academics has shown there's very little that can be done to prevent people spreading malware by clicking on dodgy links in messages, particularly where Facebook is involved.…

Owners offered refunds before wrist-puters are disabled Intel has recalled every single one of its Basis Peak smartwatches – as well as urging people to stop using them – because they can become dangerously hot.…

Passphrase re-use thrown into the spotlight – again Cloud-based backup outfit IDrive has reset an unspecified number of customer logins to thwart miscreants who are exploiting people's password laziness.…

He bought shares based on stolen newswire articles A US stock trader has admitted he profited from insider trading – by buying and selling shares using tip-offs from Ukrainian newswire hackers.…

We dig into hard-drive maker's plans for the next three months or so Backgrounder Seagate is seeing the storage market shift from client server to mobile cloud applications and storage environments. Although responding to this, it is encouraged by the capacity needs of the remaining PC client as well as significant growth in non-PC-client devices and applications.…

Now-patched kernel-level flaw in OS X app firewall will be revealed this week DEF CON A vulnerability in popular OS X security tool Little Snitch potentially granted malicious applications extra powers, undermining the protection offered by the software.…

Three pieces of tech to make computing safer Black Hat Dan Kaminsky, the savior of DNS and chief scientist for White Ops, has used the opening keynote of Black Hat 2016 to outline three technologies he has been working on that could make working online a lot safer – if they are adopted.…

Quartet of weaknesses include ancient vuln from 2009 Black Hat Security researchers have unearthed four high-profile vulnerabilities in HTTP/2, a new version of the protocol.…

Geddit? We mean the numbers. Financial results. Oh forget it After its first 2016 quarter loss and CEO change how did business data analysis haus Teradata do in its second 2016 quarter?…

Memory fault or what could explain vendor exclusion Beancounting firm DCIG has published a midrange storage array buyers' report – with one or two suppliers missing.…

Productivity crown jewels escape Waterloo Any modern Android device running Marshmallow will soon be able to run BlackBerry’s Hub, launcher and its other PIM software previously restricted to BlackBerry devices. The Canadian company will sell them through the Google Play Store for non-BlackBerry devices for free, or a 99 cent per month subscription.…

From each according to her ovary, to each according to her: Oh snap I'm infertile Scientists have identified a molecular mechanism that explains how queen bees stop worker bees from laying eggs in order to keep bee society from entering the Apocalypse.…

Making it rain while it thinks of X86? Startup Velostrata, which provides users with the ability to handle varying workloads on demand in the cloud while keeping data on premises in real time, has added data migration to the cloud, and gained additional funding cash from Xeon God Intel.…

But very likely we'll cop an eyeful of VMware goodies Sysadmin Blog VMworld 2016 is just around the corner. While some are giving VMworld a pass in 2016, things are looking up from earlier this year. If you don't mind Vegas in the summer, it might be worth your while.…

Though no one knows what you'll pay for it Hands On Samsung unveiled the world’s best Android phone yesterday and I doubt if it will be bettered by anyone this year. But Samsung didn't name a price, nor assure us that the Note 7 will actually be available in the UK. (Its predecessor the Note 5 wasn’t and isn’t a UK product, we got the Edge 6+ instead, which doesn’t have all the pen gubbins).…

So reckons the Storage Architect, in his look at 'reasons why' Comment Although not officially announced, it looks like the acquisition of PernixData by Nutanix is a done deal.…

Vultures line up with Tech Trailblazer Awards We hear plenty about genius startups that might change the way we communicate, shop, or date. We hear a lot less about the genius startups that are focused on innovating in the enterprise - you know, the place where you spend most of your lives.…

Commissions come with a price Data visualisation business Tableau has told investors its losses have more than doubled because it did too well in Q2.…

Claims growth beats that of big vendors Infinidat has piled up more customer wins as its InfiniBox arrays take more high-end storage array sales from the incumbents.…

Why? It looks like someone is saying goodbye

Big Blue's getting in your head, man IBM scientists claimed – for the first time – to have created artificial spiking neurons using a phase-change material, opening up the possibilities of building a neural network that could be used for AI.…

You don't have to be an infosec genius to protect yourself If we have internet-facing web servers (and other types of server, for that matter) we care about how vulnerable they are to attack. There are loads of services out there that you can use to probe your public-facing systems, and they'll tell you loads of useful stuff about why they might be vulnerable. But of course they're only useful if you understand what on Earth the probe service is telling you.…

Workers' plan is to hike fees or turn back on public sector Around 90 per cent of UK government IT contractors will rebel against proposals by HMRC to clamp down on self-employed workers not paying the correct employment taxes.…

Withdrawal limits mysteriously evaporated as someone lifted the loot One of the world's most popular Bitcoin exchanges Bitfinex has been torn apart with hackers making off with around US$65 million (£49 million, A$87 million) in the cryptocurrency.…

Dodgy radar, buggy OS but 'ready to strike well-defended targets anywhere on Earth' It's got dodgy radar, relies on an insecure database, boasts a buggy operating system, and a laser targeting system that can't be used for training in the UK, but the United States Air Force is satisfied that the F-35A fighter is ready for combat.…

Avowed Republican says reality TV star 'would endanger our prosperity and national security' Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman has endorsed Hilary Clinton as the next president of the United States.…

Bad security advice ensures endless joy for the North South Korea is accusing the North of using online attacks to target 90 diplomats, security officials, and journalists and of breaching 56 accounts run by such folk.…

When Jupiter blocks the Sun, the sulphur dioxide atmosphere falls as FROST If you've ever resented crunching frost underfoot on a cold morning, spare a thought for Jupiter's moon Io: when it's in eclipse, the frost on the ground is a big chunk of its atmosphere.…

Is this the moment Stephen Elop makes his move? Telstra's Chief Information Officer Erez Yarkoni has decided to leave the company.…

Big Blue's 'X-Force Red ' already has already hired a hundred hackers Black Hat IBM has used the biggest week on the security calendar to launch and poach heads for its large security, penetration testing and red teaming unit.…

US and Canadian devs and biz users can buy now, the rest of us inhabit the wrong reality Microsoft has started selling its HoloLens virtual reality headsets to all of its business customers and developer partners in the United States of America and Canada.…

You'll need Office365 to take advantage of the local server Microsoft's added Australia to the footprint of its Skype for Business PSTN conferencing feature.…

Nightmare UI and high prices blamed for low take-up of service hoped to replicate success of M-Pesa India is trying to figure out why it has failed in efforts to replicate the success of mobile banking programs that have succeed in other countries.…

In 'Ciao' VMs, containers and bare metal live together in perfect harmony Interview According to Arjan van de Ven, one of the things that's pretty common at Intel is looking at a technology and asking “what would we change if we were doing it from scratch?” One result of just such a question is Project Ciao, Intel's open source take on what an cloud orchestrator should look like.…