The Register

No good deed goes unpunished, or something like that The BianLian gang is ditching the encrypting-files-and-demanding-ransom route and instead is going for full-on extortion.…

Attackers exploiting the vulnerability could access encrypted data Microsoft has fixed a vulnerability in the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) for Windows 10 and 11 systems that could allow access to encrypted data in storage devices.…

At the very least, with other costs on top A Florida healthcare group has settled a class-action lawsuit after thieves stole more than 447,000 patients' names, Social Security numbers, and sensitive medical information, from its servers.…

More than half of Euro nation's infrastructure would have to go Ripping and replacing Huawei and ZTE equipment from German carrier networks is going to be a painful process, according to the country's economy ministry.…

Farmers need a right to repair The Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) has called upon farm equipment maker John Deere to comply with its obligations under the General Public License (GPL), which requires users of such software to share source code.…

Alert noise is 'loud and distracting' for drivers, claims filing All-electric vehicle maker Tesla is facing a potential class action lawsuit over claims that some of its cars suffer from a defect involving false collision alerts that not only inconvenience the driver, but could also represent a serious safety hazard.…

Four flaws open mobiles, cars to remote-control at baseband level with just a phone number Google security analysts have warned Android device users that several zero-day vulnerabilities in some Samsung chipsets could allow an attacker to completely hijack and remote-control their handsets knowing just the phone number.…

Botched data deletion threat roils open source worlds Container biz Docker on Thursday scrambled to bandage a self-inflicted marketing mishap, its ham-handed discontinuation of Docker Free Teams accounts.…

Gadget maker accused of 'corporate voyeurism' by gathering up footage against your wishes A lawsuit filed against eufy security cam maker Anker Tech claims the biz assigns "unique identifiers" to the faces of any person who walks in front of its devices – and then stores that data in the cloud, "essentially logging the locations of unsuspecting individuals" when they stroll past.…

Thought you guys were into fail fast, fail often? SVB Financial Group, parent to the imploded Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection less than a week after the top tech bank imploded.…

Aggrieved investors claim tech giant fibbed to inflate stock prices... and it backfired Google parent Alphabet is facing a proposed class action lawsuit from investors unhappy that the company's alleged advertising monopoly, and the subsequent DoJ investigation into this, led to "significant losses and damages."…

Elder statesman of system software makes a shocking revelation Last weekend, the SCALE conference came back from the pandemic with a bang: Ken Thompson as keynote speaker. In the Q&A at the end of his talk, Thompson made a surprising confession.…

Rival network operators champing at the bit amid claims dominant former state firm's undercutting them Britain's telco watchdog Ofcom is delaying a decision on Openreach’s proposed Equinox 2 wholesale pricing scheme for fiber broadband, with just weeks to go until the product aimed at internet service providers is due to hit the streets.…

Campaigners ask if Palantir's 'must-win' contract could see tech giants build products on NHS data Updated Campaign groups acting on behalf of doctors and patients have threatened legal action over NHS England’s procurement of a £480 million ($582 million) “federated data platform”, as questions about patient consultation and compliance with data protection law remain unanswered.…

Tough to see how this model can be released in good conscience Analysis Prompt: Describe GPT-4 as if it were a medicine advertised on television, with appropriate warnings about side effects.…

But if he swings it, the company can secure long term growth Analysis As Oracle disappointed markets with its financial results last week, CTO and founder Larry Ellison made a big sell of a growth plan based around healthcare, a plan not without its drawbacks.…

Spoiler: It's looking much better than 37 did at this stage The Fedora project has released the beta version of Fedora 38. The Reg took it for a spin, and it handles well.…

A tale of how a PEBCAK became a CLE On Call On-Call, The Register's weekly column in which we share readers' stories of tech support trauma, usually opens with a short reverie about the approaching weekend.…

Oh wait, another appeal is on the way. Seventh time the charm? Lenovo must pay US patent holder InterDigital $138.7 million to settle a years-long licensing dispute for the use of technologies deemed essential to 3G, 4G, and 5G communications.…

Tosses some features to mid-tier masses, including those buying upcoming Redmi, realme handsets Qualcomm has launched the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2 mobile platform, which it claims gives some of the bang of its high-end Snapdragon 8 series, but for handsets carrying a less hefty price tag.…

'Soft errors' caused by neutrons are well known. This study suggests we might be making them more likely When your correspondent is in the pub talking tech, conversation sometimes turns to this 2008 warning from Cisco that some of its line cards can experience "single event upset failures" due to "Thermal neutrons from cosmic radiation of energy less then 15eV."…

This one has it all: Donald Trump’s inner circle, a Beijing bot backlash, conspiracy theories, and more Meet the newest member of the crypto rogues' gallery: Ho Wan Kwok, aka Guo Wengui, aka Miles Guo, whom the US Department of Justice on Wednesday arrested over what investigators have described as a "sprawling and complex scheme … to solicit investments in various entities and programs through false statements and representations to hundreds of thousands of Kwok's online followers."…

Looks to be the same baddies attacking VMware hypervisors last year Suspected Chinese spies have exploited a critical Fortinet bug, and used custom networking malware to steal credentials and maintain network access, according to Mandiant security researchers.…

Some non-artificial intelligence needs to be involved The US Copyright Office will consider an AI-generated work copyrightable if a human can prove they themselves put a meaningful amount of creative effort into the final content, according to a policy published on Thursday.…

South Korean titan budgeted $17 billion. Could now need over $25 billion to bring the facility online Semiconductor foundry operators including TSMC, Samsung, and Intel have collectively announced well in excess of a $100 billion in new factory projects across the US, but chipmakers could end up paying far more than due to rising inflation.…

SBF alone pocketed $2.2B, or so this bankruptcy paperwork goes In fresh filings in the FTX bankruptcy case, the cryptocurrency-exchange-slash-hedge-fund's liquidators say they've uncovered $3.2 billion (£2.6b) in payments and loans made to disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried and his inner circle. …

Kaspersky cracks the code, so get busy before the next update comes Good news for ransomware victims: Kaspersky security researchers say they've cracked the Conti ransomware code and released a decryptor tool after uncovering leaked data belonging to the notorious Russian crime group.…

The nearly identical class action suits claim Tesla unlawfully restricted access to third party repairs and parts Tesla is facing a fresh pair of proposed class action lawsuits, and not due to vehicle safety: this time it's all about the rights, or lack thereof, that Tesla owners have to repair their vehicles on their own terms.…

GitHub's JavaScript failings are someone else's opportunity Exclusive Socket has found a way to protect developers from npm, GitHub's insufficiently safe JavaScript package manager, by wrapping it in a security blanket.…

Clippy 2.0 to help us 'reconnect with the soul of our work' ... just don't mention that lawsuit Microsoft's 365 productivity suite is the latest to get an injection of AI, with Redmond using what felt like an hours-long webcast to say Copilot AI will soon be available across the entire suite. …

Distraction-free long-life e-ink handheld writing tool becomes a typing tool too... but leaves us conflicted Norwegian e-ink tablet maker reMarkable has launched the Type Folio, a keyboard cover, causing one Reg hack to feel strangely conflicted.…

Free trade not quite as dead, 'but it's in danger' says Morris Chang Globalization is over, at least for the chip industry, and this will mean higher chip prices, according to semiconductor contract manufacturer giant TSMC. Despite this, the company's founder said he supports US actions to slow the development of China’s chip technology.…

Gov staff using it on personal mobes just fine... it's not like ministers use WhatsApp etc for business ... oh wait The United Kingdom government has banned use of Chinese social media platform TikTok among ministers and officials on their work devices as a “precautionary” measure over worries the app is used to snoop on Brits.…

Ups financial forecasts on back of 'healthy' Q1, as more and more of world goes digital Not everything is going its way, what with the proposed purchase of Figma held up by regulatory hurdles, yet Adobe is bucking the trend across much of tech by upping its financial targets for this year.…

Tosses some features to mid-tier masses, including those buying upcoming Redmi, realme handsets Qualcomm has launched the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2 mobile platform, which it claims gives some of the bang of its high-end Snapdragon 8 series, but for handsets carrying a less hefty price tag.…

Staff reportedly furloughed as firm scrambles to find funding after failed launch Virgin Orbit has hit the pause button on the business to "conserve capital" while it seeks funding and explores strategic opportunities.…

Um, folks? All this tech kinda needs semiconductors The UK government is upping investment in quantum by £2.5 billion ($3 billion) over the next 10 years, and also putting up £900 million ($1.08 billion) for AI Research and the country’s own exascale computer.…

We all owe three things to this pioneering machine – two more than you might think Feature Although it only gets credited with one of them – because Steve Jobs slipped up* – all modern end-user computers owe three defining aspects of their design to the Alto.…

Disc-trawling expedition of 30-year-old data turns up trumps Astronomers have uncovered the first evidence of an active volcano on Venus, using computer images captured more than 30 years ago by a NASA spacecraft.…

Online ad colossus hopes it can still make money when users want privacy Google says it has partnered with Fastly, a content delivery platform, to support its effort to deliver targeted ads in its Chrome browser with a greater measure of privacy.…

We're headed for models-as-a-service, apparently, and the OS doesn't matter Chinese web giant Baidu has launched ERNIEbot, its chatbot based on a large language model, and claimed it represents not just a fine chatbot but also a reinvention of computing.…

Shocking! Talking robots designed to interact and help boost employees' moods at work are more effective if they don't look like humanoids, according to a British research paper.…

Charcoal gray with orange highlights – so chic, and so deliberately fake NASA and its spacesuit provider Axiom Space have revealed what the astronauts on the Artemis III mission will wear if, as planned, they reach the surface of the Moon in 2025.…

In case of apathy, break Glass Google has halted sales of its business-grade augmented reality specs, the Glass Enterprise Edition.…

Active Directory privilege de-escalation will run for nine days in May before taking June off Microsoft's delayed effort to ensure its partners don't enjoy unduly privileged access to their clients' systems will run for just nine days before pausing for a month.…

Why patching matters: Everyone seemingly had a crack at security bug Multiple criminals, including at least potentially one nation-state group, broke into a US federal government agency's Microsoft Internet Information Services web server by exploiting a critical three-year-old Telerik bug to achieve remote code execution.…

Machine-learning safety and controls now everyone's problem Microsoft has eliminated its entire team responsible for ensuring the ethical use of AI software at a time when the Windows giant is ramping up its use of machine learning technology.…

Good news, unless trees or walls get in the way Wireless spectrum is a finite and tightly regulated resource and that makes it a hot commodity anytime one of the standards bodies opens another swath of it to auction.…

Victim offered two years of credit monitoring after highly sensitive records dumped online A cancer patient whose nude medical photos and records were posted online after they were stolen by a ransomware gang, has sued her healthcare provider for allowing the "preventable" and "seriously damaging" leak.…

However, those Ryan Reynolds commercials aren't going anywhere Video Mint Mobile, the prepaid budget wireless company that counts actor Ryan Reynolds among its owners, is being bought by T-Mobile US in a deal expected to close later this year for as much as $1.35 billion (£1.1b), giving the "uncarrier" yet another prepaid offering. …