The Register

Still 'no evidence' of any compromised customer-facing systems, we're told Microsoft has now confirmed that the Russian cyberspies who broke into its executives' email accounts stole source code and gained access to internal systems. The Redmond giant also characterized the intrusion as "ongoing."...

Preview's promise ends in digital dust Microsoft has abruptly pulled a feature from OneDrive that allows users to upload files to the cloud storage service directly from a URL....

US spy-tech firm at center of UK health data systems applies its technology to altogether different ends Palantir has won a US Army contract worth $178.4 million to house a battlefield intelligence system inside a big truck....

Remaining services are expected to return in the coming weeks after $22M ALPHV ransom Change Healthcare has taken the first steps toward a full recovery from the ransomware attack in February by bringing its electronic prescription services back online....

Workforce aging, systems still mission-critical ... plus Big Blue looking out for its bread and butter IBM is pinning its hopes on some fresh initiatives - the Mainframe Skills Council and the IBM Z Mainframe Skills Depot - to address a shortage of engineers who have big iron expertise ....

Classified docs, readable passwords, and thousands of personal information nabbed in Xplain breach The Swiss government had around 65,000 files related to it stolen by the Play ransomware gang during an attack on an IT supplier, its National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) says....

Court of Justice of the European Union says consent identifers are personal info, subject to GDPR Online popup solicitations that seek consent for targeted ads in Europe represent personal information, according to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) - a decision characterized as either a "mortal wound" for online ad tracking, or a welcome clarification, depending on whom you ask....

A secret message or just random characters on a license plate? Microsoft veteran Dave Plummer has shared a photo of the Corvette bought by Zip folder support work in Windows and reminded us that, 30 years later, some of the code is probably still running in the operating system....

And soon learned he had won the argument On Call Welcome once more, dear reader, to On Call - The Register's Friday trawl through a mailbag containing stories of your tech support tales....

The Register speaks to the folks behind the AI Incident Database Interview False images of Donald Trump supported by made-up Black voters, middle-schoolers creating pornographic deepfakes of their female classmates, and Google's Gemini chatbot failing to generate pictures of White people accurately....

Redmond hasn't budged on deals that make its wares cheaper on Azure, and regulators are circling A group of cloud infrastructure providers in Europe has delivered an ultimatum to Microsoft: End the "unjustified feature and pricing discriminations against fair competition" or face legal action....

Networking silicon surges, Carbon Black to be kept in the fold Broadcom has told investors its strategy of forcing VMware customers to buy only big bundles of software will see revenue increase by "double-digit percentage sequentially, quarter over quarter, through the rest of the fiscal year."...

Who knew that unzipping a font archive could unleash a malicious file Online graphic design platform Canva went looking for security problems in fonts, and found three - in "strange places."...

Puts $1.2 billion on the table for AI skills and local LLMs, tells private enterprise it expects help India's government has approved a 10,300 Crore ($1.24 billion) funding package to bolster the nation's AI infrastructure....

CISA announces more help, and calls on app makers to step up The US government and some of the largest open source foundations and package repositories have announced a series of initiatives intended to improve software supply-chain security, while also repeating calls for developers to increase support for such efforts....

iPhone giant's $2B fine shows the bloc is serious about regulation Experts say Apple has made itself a target for regulators as the EU introduces stringent new rules under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) which just went into effect....

Safety watchdog bemoans lack of cooperation with probe Boeing has come in for criticism from the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) over documentation detailing who was responsible for failures in the Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 door plug attachment....

'We refuse to operate as customer service representatives' A group of 41 US state attorneys general, tired of serving as a customer complaint clearinghouse for Facebook and Instagram users, have sent a letter to Meta asking it to figure out how to reduce a "dramatic and persistent spike" in account takeovers....

They can't have x86 goliath building military chips out in the open now can they? Intel is on track to receive $3.5 billion in US CHIPS Act funding to produce advanced semiconductors for American military and intelligence programs....

It looks like you're trying to update an operating system. Shall I be spectacularly unhelpful with that? Microsoft's legendary approach to Windows quality control is on show again with yet another update that is struggling to complete installation, this time on Windows 10 machines....

Under New Management is an early-warning system for potential poisoning of add-ons with malware Millions of Chrome users now have a way to guard against the threat of extension subversion, that is, if they don't mind installing yet another browser extension....

Alleged crim bought SmartScreen Killer, Cobalt Strike on dark-web markets A criminal claiming to be an ALPHV/BlackCat affiliate - the gang responsible for the widely disruptive Change Healthcare ransomware infection last month - may have ties to Chinese government-backed cybercrime syndicates....

If any mods are considering an anti-IPO blackout, you could be replaced by a bot Reddit is upping its AI game again, this time with the implementation of an LLM-powered harassment filter for the benefit of its army of volunteer moderators....

More than 1,000 servers remain unpatched and vulnerable Security researchers are increasingly seeing active exploit attempts using the latest vulnerabilities in JetBrains' TeamCity that in some cases are leading to ransomware deployment....

Losses could surpass 1B as 1,000 vehicles a day go unfinished Tesla's Berlin gigafactory, the company's only production plant in Europe, is still offline following a suspected arson attack days ago, and may remain so for another week....

Dutch lithography giant caught in crossfire amid escalating tensions ASML is again at the center of chip wars controversy with reports that Washington wants the Dutch government to stop the company servicing and repairing chipmaking equipment it has sold to customers in China....

No end in sight for 'horror show' even with EU's DMA Epic Games has followed the tried and tested approach of sharing executive email exchanges following the termination of its developer account by Apple....

Company reassures public it has enough beer, expects quick recovery before weekend Belgian beer brewer Duvel says a ransomware attack has brought its facility to a standstill while its IT team works to remediate the damage....

The pros and cons of some other Arm Linux distros for the pocket powerhouse The Raspberry Pi 5 is a capable little desktop computer, and some alternative distros give you more choices than the default Pi OS....

Now, who was it 'challenged' the NHS to go paperless by 2018? The UK's finance minister has promised the country's National Health Service (NHS) 3.4 billion ($4.33 billion) in IT investment, claiming it would unlock 35 billion ($44 billion) in efficiency savings by the end of the decade....

13M Instant Ink customers signed up and now a new plan is after millions more HP has 13 million customers signed up to the Instant Ink subscription program, and a recently introduced rental service that includes hardware is similarly forecast to extract "more value" from customers....

Costly project to switch supplier likely to continue into 2025, says watchdog A report on UK government debt reveals that a public sector bank relied on "people and paper" to process transactions during the pandemic as it struggled to replace outgoing service provider Atos....

Advocacy group wants more changes, starting with Device Neutrality On Thursday, Europe's Digital Markets Act (DMA) came into force, requiring large gatekeepers companies to play nice with smaller rivals....

Critical vulns in USB under ESXi and desktop hypervisors found by Chinese researchers at cracking contest Hypervisors are supposed to provide an inviolable isolation layer between virtual machines and hardware. But hypervisor heavyweight VMware by Broadcom yesterday revealed its hypervisors are not quite so inviolable as it might like....

Singaporean researchers note rising presence of ChatGPT creds in Infostealer malware logs Stolen ChatGPT credentials are a hot commodity on the dark web, according to Singapore-based threat intelligence firm Group-IB, which claims to have found some 225,000 stealer logs containing login details for the service last year....

The American mind must not be at the mercy of Chinese algorithms A group of US lawmakers introduced legislation on Tuesday that, if passed, would force Chinese internet concern ByteDance to divest TikTok - its most valuable property - or see it banned in the US....

With over 100 launches planned this year alone, matching Musk makes sense China's Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation has promised to launch three new rockets this year alone, and may also start to send reusable boosters into space next year....

Korean champ promises solid state kit that makes Li-Ion look flat by 2027 Samsung's SDI battery-making unit has announced it will start mass production of solid state batteries in 2027, and that the parts it pushes will have energy density of 900 watt-hours per liter (Wh/L), a figure lithium-ion batteries struggle to match....

Play Store commissions are a nice little earner, wherever they come from Google has been accused of profiting from gift card scams....

Moonlighted for PRC companies after side-stepping Big G's security, allegedly A now-former Google employee has been charged with stealing the ad giant's AI trade secrets while quietly working for two Chinese companies - after easily defeating whatever security controls Big G had in place....

Prices stabilized, so buyers opened their wallets Shipments of consumer-grade GPUs are growing strongly, according to graphics-focused analyst firm Jon Peddie Research, but probably not due to the emergence of generative AI or the so-called AI PC....

What's not to like? At the moment, everything on Microsoft's social network Updated If you can't get into LinkedIn at the moment, you're not alone: The social network is unavailable due to an unexplained outage....

Jump in overall cybercrime reports, $60M-plus reportedly lost to extortionists alone, Feds reckon Digital crimes potentially cost victims more than $12.5 billion last year, according to the FBI's latest Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) annual report....

AI tech loves picturing women in underwear, Windows giant won't do anything about it, watchdog told A machine-learning engineer at Microsoft, unhappy with what he claims is a lack of response to his serious safety concerns about Copilot's text-to-image tool, has gone public with his allegations....

It's geeks gone wild Many sysadmins no doubt will have wanted to fling a server from the top of a suitably tall building during moments of professional frustration, and now they can get the chance to chuck one competitively....

Time flies for The Flies NASA has wheeled out its latest set of astronaut graduates, dubbed "The Flies," and announced that it is accepting applications for the next batch of astro-wannabes....

Two flaws fixed, one knee bent to the EU, and a budding cybersecurity star feature in iOS 17.4 Apple's latest security patches address four vulnerabilities affecting iOS and iPadOS, including two zero-days that intel suggests attackers have already exploited....

As soon as public sector implements GenAI, someone will do their best to break it... or even flirt with it Gartner says governments remain wary of AI-enabled citizen-facing services, while cybersecurity experts at NordVPN have warned against getting too chatty with chatbots....

Estimates put audits at $3B revenue for Ellison's company, so go at your own pace, experts recommend A retired CIO has offered advice in dealing with Oracle audits: the vendor will try to work from its current licensing policies, yet users should stick to their contracts with the global tech giant....

Remember how Apple told you security was of paramount concern? It really seems like Apple is doing everything it can to make its new EU compliance rules for third-party iOS app stores a pain for any user or developer that wants to take advantage of them....