The Register

Forget the Riesling, bring on the WINELOADER The Kremlin's cyberspies targeted German political parties in a phishing campaign that used emails disguised as dinner party invitations, according to Mandiant....

Of course it's called ERNIE seeing as Google has BERT Future iPhones in China could include AI features powered by Baidu's ERNIE chat bot....

This is why Big Biz wants to dismantle America's crucial regulators The US National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has challenged SpaceX's severance agreements, alleging the paperwork unlawfully limits what staff can say and do once they leave the rocket maker....

Crew may well be working under contract for Beijing Chinese spies exploited a couple of critical-severity bugs in F5 and ConnectWise equipment earlier this year to sell access to compromised US defense organizations, UK government agencies, and hundreds of other entities, according to Mandiant....

'Problematic' carriers can look forward to scrutiny, fines, and new rules Ever suspected an airline was using your data to upsell, overcharge, target you with ads, or was selling it to third parties? Worried about how secure their systems are when you input that passport number? The US Department of Transportation is looking into it with a review of the country's ten biggest airlines....

As months go by without fixes, hotels take the scenic route to securing rooms Around 3 million doors protected by popular keycard locks are thought to be vulnerable to security flaws that allow miscreants to quickly slip into locked rooms....

'Safe, secure and trustworthy' AI a must, says document, but nothing in it ensures anyone plays along The United Nations has unanimously adopted a resolution aimed at establishing international AI development standards....

Short of redesigning CPUs, the fix will seriously degrade performance A side-channel vulnerability has been found in the architecture of Apple Silicon processors that gives malicious apps the ability to extract cryptographic keys from memory that should be off limits....

In wake of Post Office Horizon scandal, global execs set new profit target, and Irish ops fell short Exclusive Fujitsu is effectively shuttering business operations in the Republic of Ireland and opening consultations with employee representatives before the majority of the workforce is made redundant....

Security world reacts as NIST does a lot less of oft criticized, 'almost always thankless' work Opinion The United States National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has almost completely stopped adding analysis to Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) listed in the National Vulnerability Database. That means big headaches for anyone using CVEs to maintain their security....

Google claims rival has made an 'art and science' out of licensing Exclusive Google says the European Union's antitrust authorities have asked if Microsoft unfairly ties authentication to Azure, in a further sign that officials are considering multiple aspects of Redmond's policies....

Price hikes and reduced competition in virtual network space raised as major concerns Vodafone and Three UK have mere days to convince Britain's competition authorities that a merger won't harm consumers. Failure to do so will result in a deeper probe of the proposed corporate marriage....

Kubecon? More like Queuecon as Paris-based show's registration system fails The European leg of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation's (CNCF) Kubecon shindig kicked off this week with an AI-infused keynote and a broken registration system that left many attendees locked out....

Regulatory body insists it's on 'a journey of improvement' Updated Exclusive The UK Information Commissioner's Office has received a complaint detailing the mismanagement of personal data at the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), the regulator that oversees worker registration....

Nothing, according to its user. But the techie who tried to fix it found a sweet solution On Call As another week ebbs away, The Register hopes that readers have a nice warm cup of whatever they fancy beside them as we present another instalment of On Call, our weekly reader-contributed tale of the trials and tribulations of tech support....

FOSS developers gotta eat, but users need certainty Leading in-memory database vendor Redis is switching to a dual-license approach, imposing far more restrictive terms....

Doing things outside the walled garden is kinda hard, devs admit Meta's totally-not-a-Twitter clone, Threads, has joined the Fediverse....

Washington was most displeased and New Delhi knew it made a mistake India was subjected to intense US lobbying after suddenly imposing a requirement that computer importers obtain a license, according to a news report on Thursday....

CompSci and math professor by trade, he envisaged a galactic Usenet, and was utterly brilliant Obituary Science fiction author and academic Vernor Vinge has departed this life, aged 79....

Rights groups protested potential for sneaky censorship of political rivals India's supreme court on Thursday halted a plan to activate a government-run fact-checking unit that would assess info posted about the nation's government posted to social media platforms - the day after it was told to commence operations....

First tests of manycore fibres hailed as success over oceanic distances Japanese tech titans NTT and NEC reckon they've proven the performance of a novel fiber optic technology that could increase capacity of submarine cables by a factor of 12....

The device that makes it possible is required in all American big rigs, and has poor security Vulnerabilities in common Electronic Logging Devices (ELDs) required in US commercial trucks could be present in over 14 million medium- and heavy-duty rigs, according to boffins at Colorado State University....

You better watch out, you better not cry, better not pout, they're telling you why The US government has recommended a series of steps that critical infrastructure operators should take to prevent distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks....

Redmond says it does what it's told, but still thinks users are better off Microsoft is the subject of growing criticism in the US over allegations that its Bing search engine censors results for users in China that relate to sensitive subjects the state wants blocked....

At least we can all agree on something The US House of Representatives has passed a bill that would prohibit data brokers from selling Americans' data to foreign adversaries with an unusual degree of bipartisan support: It passed without a single opposing vote....

Upgraded fondleslab and laptops limited to business buyers only, for now At a virtual press conference on Thursday, Microsoft showed off the latest additions to its Surface hardware via an updated tablet and business laptops that Redmond assures us are built for using AI for just about everything....

Rules still unclear for Microsoft users making potentially costly decisions on enterprise applications Microsoft needs to clarify licensing arrangements around its low-code Power Apps and Dynamics 365 software to prevent users from receiving unexpected bills for their projects....

While excited by the implant, Noland Arbaugh says it's not perfect and there's still work to be done Neuralink's first human patient is now a public figure, with the company publishing a video yesterday showing him playing chess on a laptop and talking about how "freakin' lucky" he is to be involved in the tests....

Spawn of Citrix and Tibco 'no longer able to support the community edition of JasperReports Server' Even if you decide to stop offering free editions, you don't get to stop providing the source code to FOSS, users of JasperReports Server are complaining....

MarineMax may be in choppy waters after 'stolen data' given million-dollar price tag The Rhysida ransomware group claims it was responsible for the cyberattack at US luxury yacht dealer MarineMax earlier this month....

Lawsuit alleges iGiant rips off fans, stifles dev innovation, makes it tough to dump iOS for rivals The US Department of Justice has filed an antitrust complaint against Apple, accusing the iMaker of stifling innovation and undermining competitors through its App Store guidelines and developer agreements....

You have my sword ... and my bow ... and my axe! Meta, Microsoft, X, and Match Group are piling on Apple in support of Epic Games' ongoing legal battle over the Cupertino giant's stranglehold on its App Store....

'Our HBM is sold out for calendar 2024,' trills CEO Micron is basking in a market bounceback, crediting the surge of interest in AI for a jump in the company's revenue, even though buyers face the prospect of rising memory prices for the year ahead....

Cloud and upgrade conversions remain steady if sluggish, according to ERP spending bellwether DSAG The German-speaking SAP user group has released data showing the region's appetite for budget increases in spending is diminishing, casting a shadow over the prospects for cloud transformation projects....

1.44 exaFLOPs of FP4, 13.5 TB of HBM3e, 2 miles of NVLink cables, in one liquid cooled unit GTC Nvidia revealed its most powerful DGX server to date on Monday. The 120kW rack scale system uses NVLink to stitch together 72 of its new Blackwell accelerators into what's essentially one big GPU capable of more than 1.4 exaFLOPS performance - at FP4 precision anyway....

The right to repair should be the obligation to repair, if we want to avoid drowning in trashed electronics We're creating electronic waste almost five times faster than we're recycling it using documented methods, according to a United Nations report released on Wednesday....

Security experts insist ransomware is involved but Leicester zips its lips Leicester City Council continues to battle a suspected ransomware attack while keeping schtum about the key details....

Boosted on-device generative AI's not just for the flagship smartphone kids Qualcomm is pushing out its second smartphone platform within a week, in this case an extension of its Snapdragon 7 series for high-end devices that are built to a lower price point than flagship premium smartphones....

Prices also set to rise after being frozen since 2020 Nominet is cutting staff on the back of market pressure, including the loss of a government cyber contract and is considering a domain registration price increase, according to an update from its CEO....

Google pulls a few coins from the sofa and says whatever, just clarify who needs to be paid for what The French Competition Authority (FCA) on Wednesday fined Google 250 million ($272 million, 214 million) for breaking its promise to figure out a payment plan with French news publishers for using their articles....

Claims members will be bankrupted by new VMware licensing regime, and vital services disrupted Lobby group CISPE - a collective representing Cloud Infrastructure Providers in Europe - has called for regulators to investigate VMware by Broadcom's software licensing arrangements, which it claims will bankrupt some of its members and hurt end-users....

Operators pack twenty phones into a chassis - then rack 'em and stack 'em ready to do evil Chinese upstarts are selling smartphone motherboards - and kit to run and manage them at scale - to operators of outfits that use them to commit various scams and crimes, according to an undercover investigation by state television broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) revealed late last week....

New infostealer may indicate a shift in tactics - and maybe targets too, beyond Asia North Korea's notorious Kimsuky cyber crime gang has commenced a campaign using fresh tactics, according to infosec tools vendor Rapid7....

Trust us - we're the government On Tuesday, Hong Kong's legislature unanimously passed the city's latest controversial national security legislation, otherwise known as Article 23....

Claims the tech has brought 38 percent improvement to its own dev cycle time ServiceNow has released its "Washington DC" platform update, and done the very 2024 thing of adding generative AI features. It's also done a slightly less 2024 thing by not just hyping the tech, but sharing the benefits it has enjoyed by actually using it....

Claims former staff ripped off IP and even did demos for their new company on Nutanix computers Nutanix has brought a lawsuit against database-as-a-service startup Tessell, an outfit founded by three of its ex-employees, alleging the upstart's products are rip-offs of Nutanix's own Era database management product....

Exact location, power source, and go-live date unknown. But don't worry, there'll be digital jobs Google has announced plans to drop $1 billion on a new datacenter in Kansas City, Missouri - its first in the state - though when it'll come online is anyone's guess....

Phishing season started early with crims intent on the hooking early filers As the digital wolves dress in sheep's tax forms, Microsoft has thrown a spotlight on a crafty 2024 phishing expedition, unraveled in January, that preys on the unsuspecting herd of early tax filers....

From a trickle to a flood, threats now seen as too great to ignore US government is urging state officials to band together to improve the cybersecurity of the country's water sector amid growing threats from foreign adversaries....

Um. Let's successfully land on Moon without immediately faceplanting first, amirite? All aboard the space train - DARPA has commissioned defense contractor Northrop Grumman to figure out what would be necessary for a railroad network on the Moon....