The Register

Draft Horizon Europe plan cites lack of IP protections and Beijing's civil-military fusion strategy The European Commission is preparing to block Chinese institutions from significant portions of its 95.5 billion ($110 billion) Horizon Europe research program, citing intellectual property risks and links between Chinese universities and Beijing's military....

Dave Plummer's 85 KB troubleshooting tool shipped with his home number on the code As Microsoft's Task Manager celebrates three decades - and grapples with its modern tendency to leave orphaned processes behind - its creator has shared the story of how the much loved troubleshooting tool came to be....

This apparently makes VCF more extensible and open to partners Broadcom will let its hardware allies self-certify their boxes as compliant with a new spec it developed that describes rigs ready to run AI workloads under its VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) private cloud platform....

Improves tracking prevention, profile management, PDF editing, and Perplexity creeps into your address bar Firefox 145 is out, with more privacy, better profile handling, better image search for Google users... and, almost inevitably, more LLM bot integration....

Metropolitan Police lands lengthy sentence following 'complex' investigation The Metropolitan Police's seven-year investigation into a record-setting fraudster has ended after she was sentenced to 11 years and eight months in prison on Tuesday....

Various touch-ups added as MPs seek greater resilience to attacks on critical sectors UK government introduced the Cyber Security and Resilience (CSR) Bill to Parliament today, marking a significant overhaul of local cybersecurity legislation to sharpen the security posture of the most critical sectors....

Skies are open for mischief as hard-to-trace drones and fast-moving cyber raids promise new wave of disruption Britain's aviation watchdog has warned it's only a matter of time before organized drone attacks bring UK airports to a standstill....

'Don't just give me a price list or licensing module that spikes cost by 20x, show me the value,' says CTO SAP insists customers wanting "innovation" such as AI must upgrade to its latest platform for ERP, using prescribed cloud migration plans. Kingfisher - which operates 2,000 European retail stores including UK brands Screwfix and B&Q - rejected that approach....

Pre-tariff purchasing panic also helped to end 18-month growth run Shipments of tablet computers from minor vendors are on the slide, according to analyst firm IDC....

A new theory from the agency that brought us America hacked itself to blame Beijing' China's National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center (CVERC) has alleged a nation-state entity, probably the USA, was behind a 2020 attack on a bitcoin mining operation and by doing so has gone into bat for entities that Beijing usually blasts....

Elite teams' are pondering cyber-attacks to turn off energy supply or telecoms networks The head of Australia's Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) has warned that authoritarian regimes are growing more willing to disrupt or destroy critical infrastructure", using cyber-sabotage....

KONNI espionage crew covertly abused Google's Find My Device feature to remotely factory-reset Android phones North Korean state-backed spies have found a new way to torch evidence of their own cyber-spying - by hijacking Google's "Find Hub" service to remotely wipe Android phones belonging to their South Korean targets....

Hungry Hippo won't move to the launchpad until next year Aerospace manufacturer and launch service provider Rocket Lab has confirmed what many have long suspected: its "Hungry Hippo" Neutron rocket won't be hitting the launchpad until 2026 at the earliest....

Lobbying efforts gain ground as proposals carve myriad holes into regulations Privacy advocates are condemning the European Commission's leaked plans to overhaul digital privacy legislation, accusing officials of bypassing proper legislative processes to favor Big Tech interests....

Disclosure? We've heard of it The US datacenter industry is reaping huge benefits from state-level subsidies, but transparency around these incentives is limited and states that do calculate their returns find they are losing money on the deals....

Risk list highlights misconfigs, supply chain failures, and singles out prompt injection in AI apps The Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP) just published its top 10 categories of application risks for 2025, its first list since 2021. It found that while broken access control remains the top issue, security misconfiguration is a strong second, and software supply chain issues are still prominent....

Years of development still needed but AI, 3D printing, and other alternative options on the horizon The UK Government has unveiled a roadmap to replace animal testing with AI-driven options and other alternatives, targeting the elimination of certain regulatory tests by the end of 2026....

Clop's Oracle EBS exploit spree shows no sign of slowing, claims nearly 30 more casualties in media, finance, and tech. Digital engineering outfit GlobalLogic says personal data from more than 10,000 current and former employees was exposed in the wave of Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) attacks attributed to the Clop ransomware gang. The Hitachi-owned biz joins a growing roster of high-profile victims that also now includes The Washington Post and Allianz UK....

Norwegian testers claim maker has remote access, while UK importer says supplier complies with the law UK governmental is working with the National Cyber Security Centre to understand and "mitigate" any risk that China-made imported electric buses could be remotely accessed and potentially disabled....

Tariffs can't stop cheaper, better Chinese tech, says Jefferies. Tesla is Amercia's great hope Battery energy storage systems (BESS) could become standard at datacenters as AI infrastructure expand, with analysts forecasting 20 GW of capacity deployed over the next decade....

Massive increase in policy claims... and data doesn't even cover the major attacks of 2025 The number of successful cyber insurance claims made by UK organizations shot up last year, according to the latest figures from the industry's trade association....

Continuous track of long awaited AFV hits the ground ... and the terrain is pretty bumpy The British Army just received its first new armored fighting vehicle (AFV) for nearly three decades, but it is years late, hit by rising costs, is still reportedly injuring its crew, and there are questions about whether it remains relevant in the age of drone warfare....

Your real problem: 40kW racks, melting datacenters and rising power bills Opinion In recent discussions with industry vendor sales/marketing types, I've been hearing that HPC demand is falling off while AI system demand is continuing to increase. I've also seen articles implying that AI is somehow displacing HPC. Huh?...

Sachin Katti was one of new Intel CEO Lip Bu Tan's first appointments Sachin Katti, the exec Intel promoted to chief technology and AI officer in April, will leave the x86 giant to join OpenAI after just six months in the job....

Ask 339 people, get 339 answers Experts may be skeptical about corporate AI hype to varying degrees, but they share the view that machine learning models will have a significant effect on society....

Encryption protects content, not context Mischief-makers can guess the subjects being discussed with LLMs using a side-channel attack, according to Microsoft researchers. They told The Register that models from some providers, including Anthropic, AWS, DeepSeek, and Google, haven't been fixed, putting both personal users and enterprise communications at risk....

Microsoft has generated some buzz about generating some buzz Most phones and tablets include little motors that buzz when you perform common actions such as typing, or when apps notify users of important events. Microsoft may be about to bring similar good vibrations to the PC with features that see Windows 11 make your mouse or touchpad tremble when you perform UI actions such as snapping windows into place....

Security biz Wiz says 65% of top AI businesses leak keys and tokens Leading AI companies turn out to be no better at keeping secrets than anyone else writing code....

It sounds a lot like everything else AI slop has reached a new level of ascendancy, as a country song by an AI artist has hit number one on Billboard's Country Digital Song Sales chart....

We can't let supply chain shortages burst the bubble boy's balloon Free money is always better than a loan! OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently said he doesn't want government-backed loans to fuel his AI ambitions, but he's more than okay with the idea of Uncle Sam handing out tax credits under the US CHIPS Act to subsidize AI server production, bit barns, and grid components....

Resolution acquiesced to by 8 Dems includes CISA Act funding, layoff reversals, and could be easily undone The US Senate voted on Sunday to advance a short-term funding bill for the federal government, moving the country closer to ending its longest-ever shutdown. Part of the spending bill also restores critical cybersecurity programs that lapsed as the shutdown began....

One company alone was hit with more than 4,200 emails More than 5,000 businesses that use Facebook for advertising were bombarded by tens of thousands of phishing emails in a credential- and data-stealing campaign....

As Gartner offers another serving of word salad, it's time to know your skillatrophy from your pipeline choke A Gartner survey of 700 CIOs indicates that, by the end of the decade, all business IT work will involve AI, while bots will do 25 percent of that work by themselves. Good news: The analyst firm claims AI causes only one percent of job losses. Bad news: You'll have to learn some new jargon....

There's more to safer systems languages than Rust If you're looking for a Unix-like, POSIX-compatible, real-time kernel, there's no shortage of projects trying to build one. Ironclad stands out for using the Ada programming language and its formally verifiable SPARK subset....

Format declared obsolete by Google Chrome team wins PDF support The PDF Association will add support for the JPEG XL (JXL) image format to the PDF spec, according to a recently published presentation from the org's European conference. This inclusion means that JXL may yet gain mainstream adoption, despite being declared obsolete by the Chromium team....

It's OK to look: New Canary channel build supports specific silicon while 26H2 remains the main 2026 update Microsoft has confirmed that Windows 11 version 26H1 is coming, but only with changes to support "specific silicon" - possibly Qualcomm's latest chips due next year - meaning ordinary users are unlikely to see it soon....

Aleksei Volkov faces years in prison, may have been working with other crews A Russian national will likely face several years in US prison after pleading guilty to a range of offenses related to his work with ransomware crews....

Technical and political obstacles block collaboration following suspected space debris strike on craft SpaceX and Elon Musk are once again being called upon to rescue spacefarers - this time, the Chinese crew of Shenzhou-20, delayed on China's Tiangong space station after suspected space debris damage....

Here come old FlatPak, it comes grooving up slowly... Comment The tendency of Linux developers to reinvent wheels is no secret. It's not so much the elephant in the room, as the entire jet-propelled guided ark ship full of every known and unknown member of the Proboscidea from Ambelodon to Stegodon via deinotheres, elephants, mammoths and other mastodons....

Insurance giant's UK arm says cybercriminals misattributed the real victim Allianz UK confirms it was one of the many companies that fell victim to the Clop gang's Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) attack after crims reported that they had attacked a subsidiary....

We're all out of it. How to get it back is an open secret Opinion When the first generation of microcomputers landed on desktops, they promised many things. Affordability, flexibility, efficiency, all the good things still selling IT to this day. Mostly, though, they offered control....

Major battle field technology refresh will be open to the rest of public sector The UK government is launching a competition for military grade communications hardware and software in a tender worth up to 9.6 billion ($12.5 billion) including tax....

Doubles parameters to over 17 billion, to detect threats and recommend actions Exclusive Cisco is working on a new AI model that will more than double the number of parameters used to train its current flagship Foundation-Sec-8B....

In the dialup age, small mistakes could cost big money Who, Me? Welcome to another week in the world of work, and therefore also to another edition of Who, Me? It's The Register's Monday reader-contributed column in which you admit to the error of your ways....

Licensing expert worries they'll be out of control on day one Microsoft has teased what it's calling a new class" of AI agents that operate as independent users within the enterprise workforce."...

PLUS: India's tech services exports growing fast; South Korea puts the bite on TXT spam; NTT gets into autonomous vehicles; and more! Asia In Brief Chinese infosec blog MXRN last week reported a data breach at a security company called Knownsec that has ties to Beijing and Chinas military....

PLUS: CISA layoffs continue; Lawmakers criticize camera security; China to execute scammers; And more Infosec in brief There's no indication that the brazen bandits who stole jewels from the Louvre attacked the famed French museum's systems, but had they tried, it would have been incredibly easy....

Two different groups want this valuable spectrum, but can they share? A row is brewing in Europe over the 6 GHz part of the wireless spectrum, between those who believe it should be licensed for use by cellular networks and others that want it reserved for Wi-Fi....

Misdirection is the new resolution at major video game house The CEO of the company behind note-taking app Obsidian says the well-known video game house of the same name has sent one of its customer queries to his own team - claiming that "off-the-shelf AI support software" is why the gaming firm gave a user the wrong email address....

Esra'a Al Shafei spoke with The Reg about the spy tech 'global trade' interview Digital rights activist Esra'a Al Shafei found FinFisher spyware on her device more than a decade ago. Now she's made it her mission to surveil the companies providing surveillanceware, their customers, and their funders....