The Register

Criminals hit 1,800 victims across 71 countries to the tune of $100m+ An international law enforcement effort has released a decryptor for victims of MegaCortex ransomware, widely used by cybercriminals to infect large corporations across 71 countries to the tune of more than $100 million in damages.…

Chatbot might let unskilled criminals launch attacks, if the code works Cybercriminals are beginning to use OpenAI's wildly popular ChatGPT technology to quickly and easily develop code for malicious purposes.…

Analysts believe company may cut back on production like Micron and SK hynix Samsung has released earnings guidance for its fourth quarter, and the prelim figures are sobering. The Korean tech giant said it expects an operating profit of ₩4.3 trillion ($3.4 billion) – a 69 percent drop from Q4 2021.…

We buzz around new version of the other-other-other FOSS-xNix-that-isn't-Linux Dragonfly BSD 6.4 is here, with various updates and new features, including a better hypervisor, improved support for AMD GPUs, and more.…

Maybe humans could learn a thing or two about how modern medicine can prevent the spread of disease Honeybees are fascinating. They make Winnie the Pooh's meal of choice, they perform about 80 percent of pollination worldwide, and one-third of the global food supply relies on them.…

Ensures future security stuffups will take extra effort Amazon has taken the hint regarding security of its cloud-based Simple Storage Service (S3) and updated it so that all newly added objects are encrypted by default. The move comes after the cloud giant announced new default bucket security settings in December.…

Objects in mirror are closer than they appear Analysis Mobileye, Intel's autonomous driving unit, offered a rather rosy outlook on the company's advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), with CEO Amnon Shashua claiming more than $17 billion in bookings through 2030 during his CES keynote this week.…

Malware testers spot attempt to attack Macs. But (try not to weep for the bad guys) there are still compatibility issues with MS exe files A variant of the bad penny that is Dridex, the general-purpose malware that has been around for years, now has macOS platforms in its sights and a new way of delivering malicious macros via documents.…

New family of carbon super-structures discovered for futurologists to fizz over Graphene, that much-hyped super-material yet to transform industry, has competition on the block in the form of a related 3D carbon structure made up of linked balls.…

In trouble somewhere remote with patchy cell coverage but able to see the sky? You can text for help CES Satellite messaging via mobile phone appears to be the in-thing at this year's CES show in Las Vegas, with the launch of two services from comms chipmaker Qualcomm and UK-based smartphone company Bullitt Group.…

German automaker gets deeper into the GPU giant's hardware and software ecosystem CES Mercedes-Benz thinks it can create accurate digital twin simulations using Nvidia's Omniverse software to streamline automotive manufacturing operations.…

Asking us to 'submit a receipt for consideration' just doesn't cut it, claims would-be class action The nationwide systems meltdown at Southwest Airlines should have prompted a quick return of funds to ticketed customers after thousands of flights were cancelled between December 24 to January 2, according to a freshly filed lawsuit.…

Because it's all going so well for Tesla and co Microsoft is reportedly considering investing $10 million in autonomous vehicle startup Gatik, a move in line with its strategy of supporting companies in the industry rather than launching its own competing product set from scratch.…

After promising to return Covid-era data to NHS, UK govt ploughs on with extension, expansion Campaigners have warned publicly funded healthcare system NHS England that extending its contract with Palantir without meaningful consultation with patients could lead to a challenge in court.…

Don't masquerade with the guy in shades, oh no A New York federal judge told JP Morgan Chase Bank this week that he would not toss a lawsuit accusing the bank of ignoring red flags when cybercrooks stole $272 million from the New York account of the company that makes Ray-Bans in 2019.…

The natural enemy of the IT pro is the builder – they’ll cover you in dust, hose you down, or worse On Call Well, look at that: the clock says it's Friday morning so it must be time for a new installment of On Call, The Register's weekly column describing readers' triumphs over adversity, mendacity, and stupidity.…

If only there were some way to avoid...oh, there is? RTFM Security researchers at have identified multiple vulnerabilities arising from careless use of the Rust Hyper package, a very popular library for handling HTTP requests.…

Dangerous without a data protection law in place, says rights org An announcement from Indian government-owned telecom company, RailTel, detailing efforts to monetize existing free railway Wi-Fi in partnership with a private company has drawn criticism that it will lead to data collection, breaches, unwanted ads and more.…

Not all of these concepts will end in tires If you want more proof that electric vehicles are taking over, just look to CES 2023, which had been overrun with EV concepts cars on the floor and teased vehicles to be revealed.…

Is machine text plagiarism? Officials chairing this year's International Conference on Machine Learning event have banned academics from submitting papers containing text generated by large language models and tools like ChatGPT, and they aren't alone in banning such material.…

Miscreants would face the wrath of Khan The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Thursday proposed a rule to ban non-compete agreements in employment contracts, a prohibition already in place in some US states.…

Play gang blamed, ProxyNotShell cleared and hosted Exchange doomed Rackspace has confirmed the Play ransomware gang was behind last month's hacking and said it won't bring back its hosted Microsoft Exchange email service, as it continues working to recover customers' email data lost in the December 2 ransomware attack.…

New high-end Ryzen laptop CPUs? Huzzah! Now what's the number again? Analysis AMD has revealed an expanded family of Ryzen 7000 processors for laptops and desktops, and, more than ever before, they resemble the alphanumeric soup Intel deploys on its array of PC chips.…

No passwords, but plenty of stuff for social engineering and doxxing More than 200 million Twitter users' information is now available for anyone to download for free.…

What's the WiFly password again? The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is considering opening a swath of 5GHz spectrum up for use by the growing number of unmanned aerial vehicles and drones.…

Plaintiff was offered direct employment with an arbitration agreement, but never signed the letter Tesla's attempt to force a racial discrimination lawsuit into arbitration has failed potentially clearing the way for a class-action lawsuit brought by Black workers from the EV maker's Fremont, California, factory. …

Employees believe directive to seek new internal positions is just a way to get rid of them IBM CEO Arvind Krishna told employees last year that he had no plans for further layoffs.…

An ounce of prediction is worth a pound of cure Machine learning techniques, such as deep learning, have proven surprisingly effective at identifying diseases like breast cancer. However, when it comes to identifying mutations at the genetic level, these models have come up short, according to researchers at the University of California San Diego (UCSD).…

Gorilla Glass-plated Android gadget for the biz crowd but it won't be cheap... CES Lenovo has unveiled the ThinkPhone, an Android smartphone the company is positioning as a business device alongside its ThinkPad laptops, with a number of features designed to make the two devices work better together.…

Country boss now second in command, general manager vows to take 'Made in China' overseas... like everything else? While Tesla continues to take some knocks in stock price and other matters, its China-based factories and execs are poised to spread their influence globally within the company.…

Last one out turn off the lights A pair of leadership departures at Twitter this week have left the company with few, if any, remaining executives that predate Elon Musk's acquisition of the platform.…

Meanwhile, US 'ratcheting up' restrictions, expanding definition of what counts as 'cutting edge tech' says analyst Dell looks set to stop using chips from China in its products by 2024, according to reports. The move appears to be part of a wider effort to shift its supply chains away from the country in response to the ongoing tensions between China and the US.…

It's little wonder Samsung expects the consumer tech slump to continue CES As we lumber into the new year, corpulent and distended with wallets emptied from the excesses of the festive period, we now have CES 2023 to deal with – the tech tat bazaar once known as the Consumer Electronics Show.…

Accensure and L'Oreal among biz users, yet general adoption still well behind predecessor Large corporations are starting to run Windows 11 pilot programs in anger, potentially helping to boost adoption of Microsoft’s latest operating system – whose popularity remains way behind its predecessor.…

UK study pours cold water on claims after government already spent money trying to build an app Machine learning algorithms cannot accurately predict whether someone has COVID-19 by analyzing the sound of their coughs, according to a study led by the UK's Alan Turing Institute. …

A long way from password crackers for Windows NT for former L0pht legend Updated Former Twitter security chief and whistleblower Peiter "Mudge" Zatko has landed his first official role since he left the company, a part-time job as "executive in residence" with cybersecurity firm Rapid7.…

Look forward to being 'simplified,' staff told in CEO missive Amazon is set to make around 18,000 job cuts, with tech teams among those bearing the brunt of the losses.…

Where you want to be for the latest and greatest, but not for the faint of heart The latest release of siduction – a Debian "sid" based meta-distro – sneaked in before the end of the year, but while it dropped some features, it gained some important new ones too.…

Makes the repetitive strain injury you got from hours of pipetting all worth it, hey lab scientists? Far from an era of accelerating innovation and disruption, our current times manifest evidence of a slowing of discoveries and developments that change our thinking.…

iBiz's MagSafe charging tech forms the foundation of the Qi2 movement CES The Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) on Tuesday announced a new wireless charging standard called Qi2, claiming that the spec will "unify the industry under one global standard."…

Consumers around the world want to go electric, says Deloitte, but sticker shock is keeping them at bay US car shoppers are more interested in electric vehicles than ever before, but the majority agree that there's one major thing holding them back: the sticker price. …

And one Snapdragon Ride Flex SoC to bind them Qualcomm is introducing a single chip platform that will handle the myriad digital workloads that are necessary in increasingly computerized automobiles.…

Perhaps make sure your own products are working properly before razzing your rival's AMD may have spoken too soon when it roasted Nvidia a couple months ago over the melting cable issue of the rival GeForce RTX 4090 graphics cards.…

$32 billion cryptocurrency failure on the dock Former CEO of bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, pleaded not guilty to eight criminal charges on Tuesday and is expected to stand trial on 2 October.…

Beijing isn't the only one spying on work computers, right GE? An ex-General Electric engineer has been sentenced to two years in prison after being convicted of stealing the US giant's turbine technology for China.…

Send lawyers, IP and money - get me out of this Analysis When Arm made the bold move to sue Qualcomm last year it set itself on a collision course between the British chip designer and one of its largest partners that risks dealing significant damage to both companies — unless they decide to reach a settlement before things get too ugly.…

Software behemoth infusing search engine with AI machines that go Bing! Microsoft reportedly is integrating OpenAI's ChatGPT technology into Bing as it looks to boost its search engine's capabilities to challenge Google.…

UK data watchdog would like a word over failure to systems Long-standing British broadsheet The Guardian has told staff to continue working from home and notified the UK's data privacy watchdog about the security breach following a suspected ransomware attack before Christmas.…

No staff and no equipment ready after over a decade of nuclear denial Japan's decision to reignite its nuclear power industry is facing serious setbacks: 11 years of prohibition has led to a shortage of engineers, a lack of students training to fill vacant positions and a dearth of domestic nuclear manufacturing capability.…

Russian distro transforms source-based rolling release into stable, versioned product… theoretically Linux distros come and go all the time, which tends to imply that anything that continues for years has something going for it. Calculate Linux isn't well known in the West but this is the 13th major release.…