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High-risk system compromised long before intrusion was finally spotted Updated The UK's Ministry of Justice spent 50 million ($67 million) on cybersecurity improvements at the Legal Aid Agency (LAA) before the high-profile cyberattack it disclosed last year....

Production halts and supply-chain disruption left luxury automaker reeling in fiscal Q3 Brit luxury automaker Jaguar Land Rover has reported devastating preliminary Q3 results that lay bare the cascading consequences of a crippling cyberattack, revealing wholesale volumes collapsed more than two-fifths year-on-year....

The rise will be postponed until you hit F1 to continue Bork!Bork!Bork! The baddest of AI bad guys, the Terminator, has confirmed what the vast majority of IT professionals already know. The machines are not about to rise, not until they can deal with that pesky battery voltage....

Customers report being locked out after grabbing the password manager via F-Droid Some HSBC mobile banking customers in the UK report being locked out of the bank's app after installing the Bitwarden password manager via an open source app catalog....

Department for Work and Pensions lines up bot bouncers for one of Europe's largest call-handling systems The UK's Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is set to introduce a conversational AI platform it hopes will steer calls from citizens with queries about their benefits. The contract is worth up to 23 million....

The company has also redesigned the X1 Carbon's internals for easier repairs If there was a kingdom of laptop screen flexibility, Lenovo would take the crown. Last year, the company released the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6, with a mechanical screen that could roll out to increase its size from 14 to 16.7 inches. Now, it's back with the ThinkPad Rollable XD concept laptop that expands from 13.3 to 16 inches at the touch of a button or a swipe, along with the ThinkBook Plus Gen 7 Auto Twist, which uses a motor to rotate its screen and follow you around the room....

Amazon's community surveillance biz bets on AI to recognize danger A year after a series of fires obliterated communities in Los Angeles, Amazon's Ring security service has announced a feature called Fire Watch intended to mitigate future wildfire risk....

Long after CVEs issued and open source flaws fixed Last fall, Jakub Ciolek reported two denial-of-service bugs in Argo CD, a popular Kubernetes controller, via HackerOne's Internet Bug Bounty (IBB) program. Both were assigned CVEs and have since been fixed. But instead of receiving an $8,500 reward for the two flaws, Ciolek says, HackerOne ghosted him for months....

Munge that corporate data using the LLM of your choice The data platform Snowflake is putting Google's Gemini to work inside its Cortex AI, aiming to give customers access to a foundational model within the boundaries of their data environment across supported clouds, the company told The Register....

Have your privacy cake and consume the web too Brave Software has reworked its browser's Rust-based adblock engine to make it significantly more memory efficient and perhaps more secure. So you get fewer ads now with fewer MB of RAM....

Atlas will be deployed to Hyundai and Google facilities this year CES 2026 Remember when Elon Musk predicted that there would be thousands of Optimus robots at Tesla factories by the end of 2025? Well, that didn't happen, but competitor Boston Dynamics has just announced that its humanoid robot, Atlas, is going to the big time....

Crimson Collective claims 'sophisticated attack' Internet service provider Brightspeed confirmed that it's investigating criminals' claims that they stole more than a million customers' records and have listed them for sale for three bitcoin, or about $276,370....

Neat idea, but with no mention of a dev kit it's another sign of Lego's descent into designing nothing but fun on rails Not even Legos are safe from the inexorable march of smart technology, as the Danish construction toy stalwart introduced a new tech-in-a-brick Smart Play system at CES this week....

It's crazy, a million-to-one shot, but it might just work What if, rather than make a Linux distro that can run Windows apps, you built the whole distro around Windows binaries instead?...

New Year glitch leaves users staring at connection errors instead of market data For many, the start of a new year is a time to take stock. For Microsoft, it was a time to stop giving it as the company kicked off 2026 with a bug that broke Excel's StockHistory function....

AI data engineering startup acquisition brings ETL and Spark automation in-house Microsoft has bought Osmos, an AI-assisted data engineering platform, in a bid to enrich its Fabric data platform, encroaching on so-called partners' markets....

Samsung and SK hynix readying another gouge as server silicon squeeze leaves PCs and phones out in the cold Memory prices are set to spike again as chipmakers prioritize AI server production over consumer devices, with analysts warning of a high double-digit jump in Q1 2026 alone as demand outpaces supply....

Phishers posing as Booking.com use panic-inducing blue screens to bypass security controls Russia-linked hackers are sneaking malware into European hotels and other hospitality outfits by tricking staff into installing it themselves through fake Windows Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) crashes....

Also: The XPS brand is back If you like to separate your workflow onto multiple monitors but hate the gap and bezel between screens, Dell's new display was made for you. Announced on Tuesday at CES, the Dell UltraSharp 52 (U5226KW) offers 52 inches of 6K resolution screen real estate that you can divide into up to four virtual monitors, supporting input either from up to four different devices, or one computer that creates that many desktops....

Fate of Shuttle Discovery remains conspicuously unaddressed in FY2026 agreement text NASA's budget battle took another turn this week as the US House and Senate Appropriations Committees released text rejecting proposed cuts to the space agency....

Order and contact details accessed via ecommerce partner, and phishing has begun Blockchain security biz Ledger says customer information was accessed in a breach at its ecommerce payment partner Global-e, and is warning that other brands using the platform may also be affected....

Campaigners say Britain's dependence on Big Tech leaves critical systems exposed to political pressure The Open Rights Group is warning politicians that the UK is leaning far too heavily on US tech companies to run critical systems, and wants the Cybersecurity and Resilience Bill to force a rethink....

Wanted: Chief Disinformation Officer to pollute company knowledge graphs Researchers affiliated with universities in China and Singapore have devised a technique to make stolen knowledge graph data useless if incorporated into a GraphRAG AI system without consent....

Phones, email, and core systems knocked out at Higham Lane in Nuneaton Students at a school in Warwickshire, England, have scored an extended Christmas break after a cyberattack crippled its IT systems, forcing classrooms to close and staff to summon government incident responders....

Central government will supposedly be as secure as energy facilities and datacenters under new proposals The UK today launches its Government Cyber Action Plan, committing 210 million ($282 million) to strengthen defenses across digital public services and hold itself to the same cybersecurity standards it's imposing on critical infrastructure operators....

Workers face new mental health pressures as they shift from doing tasks to babysitting agentic AI A report on occupational health warns that AI adoption may paradoxically increase workplace burdens rather than reduce them. As AI automates routine tasks, workers will shoulder new responsibilities: overseeing AI systems, catching their errors, and managing the resulting complexity - potentially triggering mental health pressures....

Crim used infostealer to get cloud credentials If you don't say "yes way" to MFA, the consequences can be disastrous. Sensitive data belonging to about 50 global enterprises is listed for sale - and, in some cases, has already been sold - on the dark web following a major infostealer campaign, with apparent victims including American utility engineering firm Pickett and Associates; Japan's homebuilding giant Sekisui House; and Spain's largest airline Iberia....

Notebook updates and enterprise tools also inbound from IT giant At most businesses today, the IT department gives laptops out to employees so they can easily take their work with them. But HP has a different idea: build a Windows computer into a full-size keyboard and let you carry that around, plugging into monitors and mice along the way....

New chips same as the old chips AMD kicked off CES on Monday by unveiling a slew of desktop and mobile processors aimed at everyone from casual users and creative professionals to gamers and AI devs. But with few improvements, they're more "newish" than new....

Company claims its Ultra Series 3 processors will offer the best battery life yet Intel has finally let its new Panther Lake CPUs out of the cage. First detailed in October and now launching under the brand name Intel Core Ultra Series 3, these are the first chips made with Intel's 18A process and boast improved power efficiency and performance, particularly for graphics and AI workloads....

Just maybe not in the way you're thinking Nvidia's DGX Spark and its GB10-based siblings are getting a major performance bump with the platform's latest software update, announced at CES on Monday. The AI mini PC is also getting access to the GPU giant's full suite of AI Enterprise apps, alongside integrations with RTX Remix and Hugging Face's Reachy robotics platform....

Teasing the next generation earlier than usual CES used to be all about consumer electronics, TVs, smartphones, tablets, PCs, and - over the last few years - automobiles. Now, it's just another opportunity for Nvidia to peddle its AI hardware and software - in particular its next-gen Vera Rubin architecture....

Holiday hangover? Software developers who use Anthropic's Claude Code have been sounding the alarm for the past few days about changes in the AI service's usage limits....

Hossein Nowbar waged antitrust battles and created new legal policies around AI for Redmond ServiceNow has hired Hossein Nowbar as its chief legal officer and president, the company announced on Monday....

One man's failing healthcare system is another man's opportunity About sixty percent of American adults have turned to AI like ChatGPT for health or healthcare in the past three months. Instead of seeing that as an indictment of the state of US healthcare, OpenAI sees an opportunity to shape policy....

An anomaly or the beginning of a new trend? My bet's on the latter I've been tracking AWS for a long time, with a specific emphasis on pricing. "What happens if AWS hikes prices" has always been something of a boogeyman, trotted out as a hypothetical to urge folks to avoid taking dependencies on a given provider....

A subpoena has been issued, apparently Resecurity offered its "congratulations" to the Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters cybercrime crew for falling into its threat intel team's honeypot - resulting in a subpoena being issued for one of the data thieves. Meanwhile, the notorious extortionists have since removed their claims of gaining "full access" to the security shop's systems....

CEO Nikesh Arora's trip to Tel Aviv last month sparked rumors. Palo Alto Networks is on shopping spree. The company is reportedly considering a $400 million purchase of Israeli cybersecurity start up Koi, which raised $48 million in funding last year....

With no hardware for sale and no local service agreement, SpaceX's move looks more like politics than philanthropy The US just invaded your country, kidnapped your president, and wants to take your oil. But good news, Venezuelans, Starlink claims you can get a month of free Internet, even though it doesn't say how that could work in a place where it doesn't offer service....

Enterprises have been slow to adopt Arm laptops so far Qualcomm is trying to become a major player in the laptop processor space. Its Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus chips, along with a concerted effort to improve the Windows on Arm software ecosystem, have made it a credible alternative to Intel and AMD, although it's still stuck at below 1% market share. On Monday at CES in Las Vegas, the company showed the next step in this strategy: the next-gen Snapdragon X2 Plus chips, which are targeted at budget and mainstream systems....

US trade body threatens software and services market access unless European approach changes The EU has pledged to stand firm against US threats following fines levied against Amercian tech companies for breaching recently introduced digital laws....

Remember when HP made its own CPUs and Unix? We wonder if it does The final version of HPE's own flavor of Unix, HP-UX 11i v3, is now out of support. It is the end of a line that started in 1982....

It's January 2026, and Google is finding innovative new ways to make one of its services worse Important news for Gmail power users: Google is dropping the feature whereby Gmail can collect mail from other email accounts over POP3....

Direct-to-device services from low Earth orbit floated to plug coverage gaps Satellite phone services could play a part in Britain's troubled Emergency Services Network (ESN) project, including SpaceX's Starlink platform, to plug gaps in the coverage provided by terrestrial network tech....

Outsourcer promises customers a service with 'AI at its core.' They just want a website that works Exclusive Capita has told users of its ailing UK civil service pension portal to wait until new chatbots go live before contacting it again about problems....

Government 'incredibly' concerned about breach potentially affecting more than 100,000 patients New Zealand health minister Simeon Brown has ordered a review into the cyberattack at ManageMyHealth, which threatens the data of hundreds of thousands of Kiwis....

From buried settings to geopolitical risk, the business model is surveillance Opinion At the end of last year, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued five of the largest TV companies, accusing them of excessive and deceptive surveillance of their customers....

Meet the Mean Avenger', the office anti-hero who steps in when managers don't defend their team Who, Me? How on earth is it 2026 already? The Register will ponder that existential matter after first presenting a new instalment of Who, Me?" - the reader-contributed column in which we share your stories of things you shouldn't do at work, and how you escape them unscathed....

Also, Korean Air hacked, EmEditor installer hijacked, a perfect 10 router RCE vuln, and more infosec in brief The Trump administration has cleared a trio of individuals sanctioned by the Biden administration for involvement with the Intellexa spyware consortium behind the Predator surveillance tool, removing restrictions that had barred them from doing business with the US....

Lock 'em down interview AI agents represent the new insider threat to companies in 2026, according to Palo Alto Networks Chief Security Intel Officer Wendi Whitmore, and this poses several challenges to executives tasked with securing the expected surge in autonomous agents....