The Register

When the going gets tough, the tough get messy This Damn War “What’s the smallest fire I could start to be noticed, but not so big that I risk burning down the building?” is one of the stranger thoughts to have entered my head, in many years of working in IT. No, I'm not a closet pyromaniac, so why was I entertaining such thoughts?…

Farmer tried turning it off and on again, but didn't know how to do it properly On-Call Welcome again to On-Call, our Friday frolic through readers memories of odd jobs in odd spots.…

Customer targeted by fraudsters seeking remote access of her PC Updated TalkTalk customers are still being targeted by scammers, following a series of data breaches at the company.…

Marshmallow-based phone strips out Android's evil bits, devs vet all installed apps A custom Android phone is being pitched to security and privacy pundits promising to deliver by goring Google services, preventing app installation, and deploying end-to-end encryption.…

Thankfully it isn't as bad Stuxnet, but Siemens control kit is in theoretical peril FireEye threat researchers have found a complex malware instance that borrows tricks from Stuxnet and is specifically designed to work on Siemens industrial control systems.…

This doesn't mean the nagware is working: selling PCs running anything is now a slog Microsoft's sometimes hard-ball tactics to get people running Windows 10 look like they're working.…

Facebook offers choice between bots and spies, or quiet privacy Facebook will shutter its native message facility, forcing users to install the Messenger client which will sport opt-in end-to-end encryption.…

Not an Uber of the skies, just an attempt to bypass general aviation regulations Flytenow, the bunch of idiots agile and disruptive app-driven startup that reckoned it could disrupt general aviation, has been given an almighty “don't argue” by the US District Court, Columbia Circuit.…

Payloads unknown China-based hackers have been fingered for bit-squatting attacks against Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party, FireEye researchers say.…

You've got to FIGHT! For your RIGHT! To COFFEE! Give us your desperate IT students, struggling to pay the rent on 20 hours a week as a cleaner, and Australia can at least give you the odd cup of coffee.…

Career progression may include very hard time, though An analysis of the finances and operation of a ransomware outfit has shown it's entirely possible bankroll a modest-sized crime gang on victims' payoffs.…

Open source needs strong copyright; weak copyright only helps bullies Comment Oracle will ultimately prevail in its Java copyright lawsuit against Google. And if you're a free software developer or supporter, you should be cheering them all the way to the wire.…

FTC claims first-ever jury win for do-not-call violations Three American film companies made 117 million illegal robo-calls to flog DVDs, a court has ruled.…

Astroboffins reveal Hubble breakthrough Pic Cosmologists are scratching their heads after data from the Hubble Space Telescope has shown that the universe is expanding between 5 and 9 per cent faster than first thought.…

That's not a typo, we've checked and checked again Everyone knows that being an infosec analyst is a cushy job – but did you know quite how much? Because according to job website CareerCast, it is literally the least stressful job in the country.…

Neighbor Discovery flaw in its routers is not specific to Switchzilla's gear Cisco is warning network administrators about a flaw in the handling of IPv6 packets that it says extends beyond its own products.…

Lawsuit wipes over $6bn from Oracle's value Oracle isn't known as a shrinking violet when it comes to legal battles, and it's coming out swinging over allegations that it was playing fast and loose with its cloud revenue reporting.…

Troubled engineering student made claims online The student who shot and killed his engineering professor and then himself at a Los Angeles university had accused the professor of stealing his code.…

Hard times for hard-working hard-drive workers Western Digital is planning to lay off 507 workers, according to paperwork submitted to California's department of employment.…

On-premises IT-slingers to navigate murky waters Comment Barracuda customers have started moving data and applications to the public cloud at a surprisingly fast and unprecedented rate, with on-premises IT facing a rocky road to becoming a wasteland.…

Pump down the volume A pause in hyper-scale deployments has triggered the first year-on-year decline in seven quarters for global server shipments and revenues.…

£5 polymer PM marks death knell of paper banknotes The Bank of England today unveiled the UK's first plastic banknote - a polymer fiver featuring Winston Churchill.…

Mobile banking trojan matches banks' look and feel Miscreants behind the Marcher mobile malware have begun targeting UK banking customers.…

IT Outsourcing techies warned their P45s are being lined up for end of July Another quarter and another round of people are being crammed into Hewlett Packard Enterprise Services’ employment cannon – 500 poor souls in the UK and Ireland have been told to stand in line.…

3D XPoint-beating tech explained Backgrounder Remember the company we wrote about yesterday? The startup with the startling technology which claimed its storage and compute technology could run database queries 60 times or more faster than other systems, and offers ”limitless enterprise storage".…

Towers, tunnels, museums - your pocket-sized guide In 2013, The Register began its travel series Geek's Guide to Britain. Today, that series is available as a book.…

Said something naughty in London? You could be cuffed Two-and-a-half thousand Londoners have been arrested over the past five years for allegedly sending “offensive” messages via social media, statistics have revealed.…

It's version 9 of Element OS – geddit? NetApp’s SolidFire unit has announced a new appliance, an operating system refresh, and a software licensing change separating its software from specific hardware products.…

Hewn from the living meteorite, boffins confirm New analysis of a dagger entombed with King Tutankhamun "strongly supports" the theory that it was forged from meteoritic iron.…

Absolute bans should only be last resort The European Commission wants member countries to apply a light regulatory touch to “collaborative economy platforms” such as Uber and AirBnB and to ban as a last resort only.…

Liz I's standard measure toasts Brit experimental aircraft London's Science Museum will on 8 December cut the ribbon on a mathematics gallery featuring a range of stuff including a three-rotor Engima machine, an Islamic planispheric astrolabe and the Handley Page "Gugnunc" experimental aircraft.…

Just as Human Rights Joint Committee report lands IPB As the Snoopers' Charter approaches its highest hurdle yet in Parliament next week, Theresa May has made some concessions to its contested provisions, particularly those affecting privacy, sensitive professions, and access to medical records.…

And new EU laws likely to bring in bigger private sector fines UK data breaches caused by good old human error rose again early this year, accounting for 62 per cent of all data breaches reported to UK data protection watchdogs in the first quarter of 2016.…

Can someone put these fat costly clunkers out of their misery? Comment If you work in software, I’ll bet you worked on a project like this. It’s where dozens, or even hundreds of people are involved in the spec process, and what tumbles out is a monster that nobody ever wanted.…

Psst. I've got a bridge for sale if you fancy it Think virtual reality headsets are for gamers? Think again, says analyst Forrester.…

Virtual tape libraries analysed Blog I’ve never been fond of VTLs (virtual tape libraries). I like deduplication but it quickly became a feature and is not a product. And lately we all want more out of backups, don’t we?…

'Please', 'thanks', and GUMMY BEARS will win over anyone, scam menacer says AusCERT Internal anti-phishing programs are essential to prevent chief executive officers wiring money to fraudsters, threat man Donald McCarthy says.…

Win 10 OEM: bloatware strikes again! Lenovo is warning users to uninstall its Accelerator support application after it was revealed to have what it says are serious interception vulnerabilities.…

Sports enterprise AV, free Protonmail, and one mysterious crypto chip A US$14,000 (£9,706, or A$19,352) Android phone has been launched pitching 'military-grade encryption' at privacy-conscious executives.…

See the most detailed pics and video from Pluto yet Pics and video NASA has released the most detailed pictures we're likely to get from the New Horizons probe flying past Pluto, and they show the planet displaying habits most commonly associated with 60s décor.…

Another way your camera can watch you (but with permission) The intentions are good, we suppose: Brown University researchers have published a Javascript library that lets a standard Webcam track eye movements.…

Lurk trojan attack lands 18 behind bars in FSB dragnet Russia's FSB says it's tagged the gang that used the “Lurk” trojan to raid 1.7 billion roubles – about US$25 million – from financial institutions.…

Privacy, we've heard of it The Australian Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, in an excess of security ineptitude, has mistaken the cc: field for the bcc: field. The inevitable result: a database of names and addresses has leaked.…

Who's cut'n'pasting routines – the Norks or someone trying to blame the Norks? Five additional pieces of malware suggest there is a stronger tie between North Korea's Lazarus Group of hackers and last month's run of cyber-attacks on banks.…

Can barely build a system, let alone secure it A state with a poor record for protecting private data, in a country that has no mandatory breach disclosure, wants to add names to a health database containing peoples' HIV status: what could possibly go wrong?…

Show also features reversible USB 2.0, iPhone 7 cases and a cloud that wants to hug you They've gone and done it: USB 2.0 connectors can now be reversed!…

Reg man gets his hands on Samsung's only-in-Korea Gear 360 VR cam Over the last six months, 360-degree videos have become A Thing. Google added support in YouTube, Facebook followed, and now we see a cavalcade of announcements from device manufacturers, all wanting a slice of the next revolution in photography.…

Sucking ad revenue away from other channels, how DARE you? Minecraft advertising is about to turn into a sockpuppet business, with Mojang implementing a new no-advertising policy.…

Big Red vows to fight ex-finance bod's claims that it inflated sales numbers An ex-Oracle staffer claims she was fired for refusing to keep quiet about the database giant's exaggerated cloud sales.…

Virtualized VMXNet3 NICs borked by Microsoft install VMware is warning administrators to steer clear of an official update for Windows 7 and Server 2008 – after the patch was found to be incompatible with some virtual machines.…