The Register

You don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure out the reasons why NASA has barred Chinese nationals from accessing its premises and assets, even those who hold visas that permit them to reside in the USA....

Ovoid-themed in-memory malware offers a menu for mayhem EggStreme' framework looks like the sort of thing Beijing would find handy in its ongoing territorial beefs Infosec outfit Bitdefender says it's spotted a strain of in-memory malware that looks like the work of Chinese advanced persistent threat groups that wanted to achieve persistent access at a military company" in the Philippines....

Gartner says migrations remain a risky multi-year nightmare, but selective re-platforming can pay off More than a third of workloads currently running under VMware will run on another platform by 2028, with its own trusted hosting partners pushing some customers to make the move....

Tick tock Sam, just fifteen months before your first bill is due OpenAI will pay Oracle $300 billion over the course of five years to fuel Sam Altman's AI ambitions by providing five gigawatts of compute capacity....

Patch, turn on MFA, and restrict access to trusted networks...or else Affiliates of the Akira ransomware gang are again exploiting a critical SonicWall vulnerability abused last summer, after a suspected zero-day flaw actually turned out to be related to a year-old bug....

We went through two hours of Senate hearings so you didn't have to Video As the Trump administration pushes to loosen federal rules on AI, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) has introduced legislation to give AI developers a two-year waiver from certain regulations, renewable for up to a decade....

Using GPUs to design better bit barns for GPUs? It's the circle of AI With the rush to capitalize on the gen AI boom, datacenters have never been hotter. But before signing that multi-billion dollar purchase order on GPUs, Cadence Systems suggests using a few of them to simulate whether that fancy new bit barn of yours can actually handle the heat....

'We do believe that this was likely the creation of a cybercrime group,' threat hunter tells The Reg ChillyHell, a modular macOS backdoor believed to be long dormant, has likely been infecting computers for years while flying under the radar, according to security researchers who spotted a malware sample uploaded to VirusTotal in May....

The usual cadre of scientists who disproved previous findings are stumped If you were ever wondering where you'd be when NASA announced peer-reviewed evidence hinting at extraterrestrial life - long dead, if it existed at all - look around, because this is it....

Nearly 100 requirements laid down by 10 separate oversight and advisory groups leave agencies tangled in red tape The US government wants AI in every corner of government, but the unstoppable force of new tech is running into the immovable object of bureaucracy - a growing mass of AI rules....

Classes moved to VBA, but upgrading and testing is unavoidable With the end of Windows 10 looming, Microsoft has reminded hard-pressed admins that other critical technologies are on the endangered list, notably VBScript....

Systems offline as specialists continue to comb through wreckage Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) says "some data" was affected after the luxury car maker suffered a digital break-in early last week....

New look for Visual Studio but the core still runs on the old .Net Framework Microsoft has released a preview of Visual Studio 2026, the first major version update since 2021, promising deeper AI integration and a new look and feel....

Arbitrarily inflated lock-in-tastic fees curbed as movement charges must be cost-linked Updated Most of the provisions of the EU Data Act will officially come into force from the end of this week, requiring cloud providers to make it easier for customers to move their data, but some of the big players are keener than others....

With extinction event predicted, Big Red's four-year forecasts will have to meet reality Comment An industry adage has it that Oracle's calculator only has a plus button, which is reassuring for investors....

Why strap pricey, power-hungry HBM to a job that doesn't benefit from the bandwidth? Analysis Nvidia on Tuesday unveiled the Rubin CPX, a GPU designed specifically to accelerate extremely long-context AI workflows like those seen in code assistants such as Microsoft's GitHub Copilot, while simultaneously cutting back on pricey and power-hungry high-bandwidth memory (HBM)....

Prosecutors claim Ukrainian ran LockerGoga, MegaCortex, and Nefilim ops - $11M bounty on his head A Ukrainian national faces serious federal charges and an $11 million bounty after allegedly orchestrating ransomware operations that caused an estimated $18 billion in damages across hundreds of organizations worldwide....

Department dangles 160K salary for CDIO to wrangle legacy systems, failed projects, and 1.8B budget The UK Home Office - a government department with a rich track record of failing IT projects - is on the hunt for a chief digital and innovation officer (CDIO) with an advertised salary not far off from the prime minister's....

One parent expressed concern for their child's safety A clumsy data breach has affected hundreds of children at a Birmingham secondary school....

Meeting with former UK prime minister and his chief advisor withheld from official records, according to leaked documents Former British prime minister Boris Johnson and his chief adviser Dominic Cummings met with Peter Thiel, co-founder and chairman of Palantir, in 2019, months before the US spy-tech company landed a key role in the UK's COVID-19 response, according to papers seen by The Guardian....

It's the season of FOSS fruitfulness as juicy goodness falls from the branch The Northern hemisphere is moving into autumn and FOSS vendors are falling over themselves in their efforts to get new versions out for the season....

Are you sure you know who has access to your systems? Feature Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) is the latest UK household name to fall victim to a major cyberattack. IT systems across multiple sites have been offline for over a week after what the company described as a "severe disruption."...

Government wants to assess would-be immigrants' language skills remotely Plans for an 816 million system to test the English skills of UK visa applicants have stalled, with the Home Office pushing procurement back at least five months after repeated consultations with suppliers....

Management software stumbles at start of term, leaving staff unable to track attendance or reach parents UK school management information system (MIS) provider Bromcom has had a bad start to the academic year after its Azure-based service left staff struggling to track student attendance, let alone access contact details for parents and guardians....

Four-tier core design debuts amid NPU debate Arm has lifted the lid on its latest mobile platform, comprising new CPU and GPU designs plus rearchitected interconnect and memory management logic, all optimized with a coming wave of AI-enabled smartphones in mind....

If you can find the T&Cs, which are often hidden, you may spot hidden costs and nasties galore Vendors' licenses for AI software and services are in a state of pandemonium," according to Gartner VP analyst Jo Liversidge....

ERP giant patches flaw that allows total takeover of NetWeaver, Microsoft has nothing under attack for once September's Patch Tuesday won't require Microsoft users to rapidly repair rancid software, but SAP users need to move fast to address extremely dangerous bugs....

Big Red's profits are flat, but its order book is phat Larry Ellison moved a lot closer to being the world's richest man on Tuesday after Oracle saw a huge leap in its stock price, the largest single day's improvement in decades, thanks to a pipeline stuffed full of big deals....

We're making billions on AI, how about you? Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian says the Chocolate Factory's rental computing business has $106 billion of unfulfilled contracts, and he expects Google Cloud will be able to realize about half of that in revenue within two years....

Miscreants cost victims time rather than money During the two-hour window on Monday in which hijacked npm versions were available for download, malware-laced packages reached one in 10 cloud environments, according to Wiz researchers. But crypto-craving crims did little more than annoy defenders....

iPhone 17 Air shows company lightening up Apple on Tuesday showed off its iPhone 17 lineup at a media event dubbed, "Awe Dropping," favoring timeworn self-adulation over a more literal pun like "Four Play."...

Now if only someone would remember to apply those rules inside the DoD It's about to get a lot harder for private companies that are lax on cybersecurity to get a contract with the Pentagon, as the Defense Department has finalized a rule requiring contractor compliance with its Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) program....

If you're within 50 miles of Redmond, then it's time to come in Microsoft is rolling out a new return-to-office policy that will see first Redmond, then US, and then global staff getting back on-prem at least three days a week....

'The practice... has since been fixed,' Pentagon official tells The Reg The US Department of Defense, up until this week, routinely left its social media accounts wide open to hijackers via stream keys - unique, confidential identifiers generated by streaming platforms for broadcasting content. If exposed, these keys can allow attackers to output anything they want from someone else's channel....

HelloGym's data security clearly skipped leg day Exclusive Sensitive info from hundreds of thousands of gym customers and staff - including names, financial details, and potentially biometric data in the form of audio recordings - was left sitting in an unencrypted, non-password protected database, according to a security researcher who shut it down....

Microsoft invitation lost in mail after HoloLens made soldiers sick The US Army's troubled attempt at outfitting soldiers with mixed-reality headsets is getting a $354 million boost and a new pair of lead contractors as part of a second attempt to make the kit stick without making troops sick....

Microsoft feared too many machines would end up bricked Microsoft vet Raymond Chen first told the story of HLT and Windows 95 more than 20 years ago. The instruction tells the CPU to effectively shut itself down until the next hardware interrupt - ideal for laptops, since power consumption would be hugely reduced....

Analyst bets smart money on 'proactive digital companion' upgrade cycle Generative AI will supposedly spark a smartphone renaissance, driving both unit shipments and the value of devices sold this calendar year - or so claims a rather optimistic forecast from Gartner's consultants....

For the third time in a decade Streaming platform Plex is warning some users to reset their passwords after suffering yet another breach....

Netherlands based Nebius Group to deliver capacity from facility in New Jersey As the AI frenzy shows no signs of letting up, Microsoft has signed an agreement that could be worth up to $19.4 billion with Netherlands-based Nebius Group - formerly known as Yandex N.V. - in exchange for access to its GPU infrastructure over five years....

First, server products go end of life, now datacenter gets the chop, and larger customers will pay more Atlassian is discontinuing its datacenter products, including Jira, Confluence and Bamboo, in favor of Atlassian Cloud. There is a partial exception for Bitbucket, a source code repository manager, which will have a license option covering both cloud and datacenter....

Dreams of one satellite constellation die so another can live EchoStar has agreed to sell the company's AWS-4 and H-block spectrum licenses to SpaceX in a transaction worth $17 billion....

Contract tender follows 'alarming' safeguarding failure at border with undocumented kids The UK's Home Office is offering 1.3 million ($1.7 million) to developers of age-determining software - a tech it wants to deploy widely across its systems....

Ivalo XE handset targets governments and security critical sectors, though Qualcomm silicon keeps it tied to the US Finnish phone maker HMD Global is launching a business unit called HMD Secure to target governments and other security-critical customers, and has its first device ready to go....

AI security reviews add new risks, say researchers App security outfit Checkmarx says automated reviews in Anthropic's Claude Code can catch some bugs but miss others - and sometimes create new risks by executing code while testing it....

From fast food fiascos to botched databases, there are fresh honors for machine learning misadventures It was bound to happen. The Darwin Awards are being extended to include examples of misadventures involving overzealous applications of AI....

Report warns creaking infrastructure undermines the National Crime Agency's efficiency and effectiveness The UK's National Crime Agency (NCA) clings to legacy systems and relies on an IT strategy that lacks clarity, a policing watchdog has found....

Dev admits the game once ate an entire CPU core Former Microsoft engineer Dave Plummer has come clean and admitted that the worst bug he ever shipped was in... Pinball....

Charities welcome change, but critics warn the law is already too broad Tech companies will be legally required to prevent content involving self-harm from appearing on their platforms - rather than responding and removing it - in a planned amendment to the UK's controversial Online Safety Act....

Prepare to take tests in stuff you already know how to do, just to keep you sharp Using AI may cause some of your skills atrophy, and your employer therefore needs to take steps to keep you sharp....