The Register

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....

Rust veteran Steve Klabnik is using an LLM to explore memory safety without garbage collection Naming a new programming language "Rue" sounds like an acknowledgment of doubt about the project's prospects, if you take "Rue" to mean "regret."...

Repeat after me: Chatbots are not sentient and have no agency Grok, the AI chatbot owned and operated by Elon Musk's xAI, is facing a firestorm of outrage after users prompted it to create images of naked and scantily clad people from real photographs, some of whom are underage....

But how about some smart glasses instead? Apple's pricey Vision Pro VR headset had a tough 2025....

Exec argues we need a new metaphor focused on AI as a lever rather than a job killer Microsoft CEO and head AI peddler Satya Nadella wants you to know that it's time for the next phase of AI acceptance, where we focus on how humans are empowered by tools and agents and how we deploy resources to support this growth....

Netflix documentary part 2 in the works? Ilya Lichtenstein, who pleaded guilty to money-laundering charges tied to the 2016 theft of about 120,000 bitcoins from the Bitfinex exchange and was sentenced to five years in prison, has been released after roughly 14 months in the slammer....

For the bargain price of 6.5 bitcoin A cybercrook claims to have breached Pickett and Associates, a Florida-based engineering firm whose clients include major US utilities, and is selling what they claim to be about 139 GB of engineering data about Tampa Electric Company, Duke Energy Florida, and American Electric Power.The price is 6.5 bitcoin, which amounts to about $585,000....

EU 'closely monitoring' along with NATO as state action suspected but not confirmed Finnish police have arrested and are interviewing two crew members from a class A cargo ship sailing from Russia after suspected cable sabotage in the Baltic Sea....

A full-featured, Sixel-capable terminal browser for those who'd rather skip AI assistants Old-time web users will fondly remember Lynx, a text-only browser that ran from the terminal. Now, there's a Sixel-compatible web browser that runs completely from the terminal, and has all the graphics and modern features you'd expect....

The AI era needs more juice The AI-fueled datacenter boom continues apace, with Google parent Alphabet moving to acquire energy and infrastructure biz Intersect, while Elon Musk's xAI is reportedly planning to expand beyond its already huge complex in Tennessee....

Jacob Riggs is set to swap London for Sydney some time in the next year A British security researcher has secured Australia's strictest, invite-only visa after discovering a critical vulnerability in a government system....

Move will see spacecraft shift from 550 km to 480 km as collision risks rise Starlink is to lower the orbits of about half its satellite constellation over the course of this year, citing safety concerns....

Gavin Webb orchestrated Operation Cronos as it pulled off the legendary disruption sting A senior British crimefighter has been awarded one of the country's highest tributes for public service for his role in the 2024 LockBit ransomware takedown....

There is no automated substitute for experienced staff, and 'if there's one thing AI has a never-ending thirst for ... it's data' Interview If AI can take on the role of a junior programmer, what happens when senior staff start retiring? Industry veteran and CEO of Safe Software, Don Murray, reckons the technology is becoming indispensable, but the human can never be removed from the loop....

More tales of apocalypse avoided - including in an animal testing lab - and the hard work that made that possible ON CALL Y2K Welcome to another edition of On Call, The Register's Friday column that shares your tech support stories. Over the holiday season we're telling tales of the Y2K bug, and readers who spent December 31, 1999 on call in case the world's computers caused calamities....

'What do we need to do better?' El Reg talks to comms boss about the problem Interview Scientists and engineers have been taken aback by the amount of radio interference generated by satellite constellations, and many are calling on standards bodies to improve operator performance....

Do you want bork with that? Bork!Bork!Bork! Today's example of bork-in-the-wild shows that Microsoft is not the only game in town when it comes to screens having an IT moment in public. No, there will be no orders on this Firefox-based drive-thru kiosk at Wendy's....

Well kinda... Your call will be transferred to the next available assistant Microsoft had a special way of dealing with customers demanding to speak to its CEO. One that kept the customer happy without necessarily bothering His Billness....

GPUzilla has reportedly received orders for more than two million units With the sales ban lifted, Chinese tech giants, including ByteDance, are scrambling to secure orders for Nvidia's H200 graphics accelerators while they can. But will there be enough to satisfy demand?...

What, weekend warriors from Silicon Valley not good enough? The US Army has been all-in on becoming an AI-powered outfit for some time, and now it's creating a career path for officers to specialize in making its automation dreams come true....

As in past incidents, ESA says the impact was limited to external systems The European Space Agency has suffered yet another security incident and, in keeping with past practice, says the impact is limited. Meanwhile, miscreants boast that they've made off with a trove of data, including what they claim are confidential documents, credentials, and source code....