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Grab a Register reader discount – and learn to sharpen your negotiation tactics and reduce costs Promo Is your organisation equipped with the IT services and products it needs to achieve its business objectives? Are your procurement processes adequate in this fast-moving era of digital business? How quickly can you introduce new ideas and solutions? Have you thought about the future of your critical IT services, your software leases and your cloud contract?…

Nature isn't perfect either, eh Aussie astroboffins think they have worked out one of the more unusual oddities in the universe – glitchy pulsars.…

Expensive renewals once a year... or free certificates any time? Tough choice CA/Browser Forum – an industry body of web browser makers, software developers, and security certificate issuers – is considering slashing the lifetime of HTTPS certs from 27 months to 13 months.…

Child abuse swap-shop admins to spend decades behind bars The FBI is keeping quiet how exactly it brought down a Tor-hidden pedophile haven, having secured decades-long prison sentences for four of the website's administrators.…

Government officials will guess the future and deny those likely to utilize public benefits The Trump administration on Monday previewed a pending rule change that will make it more difficult for legal immigrants to obtain green cards or temporary visas in Amerca if they use public benefits like food stamps or Medicaid.…

Powerful code signed by Microsoft littered with vulns DEF CON Too many trusted Windows 10 peripheral drivers, signed off by Microsoft and running with powerful kernel-level privileges, are riddled with exploitable security vulnerabilities, according to infosec biz Eclypsium.…

Plus: The spambot that actually DOES record screens of pr0n users Roundup Here is your friendly summary of recent news from the front lines of information security beyond everything else we've already reported.…

Politicians appeal to hackers to take up the fight DEF CON Despite some progress, the US is still massively underprepared for a serious cyber attack and the current administration isn't helping matters, according to politicians visiting the DEF CON hacking conference.…

Or why My Chemical Romance broke up South Korea has retaliated against Japanese trade measures by removing the country from its white list of automatically approved export partners.…

Faulty F-15s, at-risk airbases and much more DEF CON For the first time, Vegas's annual DEF CON hacking conference has an "aviation hacking village", and the US military is scouting around there for a few good hackers to find bugs that its own hackers have missed.…

More unregulated creepycams blight London Britons working for Google at its London HQ are being secretly spied on by creepy facial recognition cameras – but these ones aren't operated by the ad-tech company.…

Interim measure until Brexit, or never... whichever happens first The UK government has threatened hosting platforms with big fines for providing access to unpleasant videos and will task UK comms regulator Ofcom with looking after how that happens.…

Not ready for production yet, warns team as it expands support for file system Canonical is expanding Ubuntu's support for ZFS, an advanced file system originally developed by Sun Microsystems.…

'It should be up to Android users which search engine they use, and absolutely not up to Google' Tree-planting search engine Ecosia has said no thanks to the Android search choice screen Google was forced to offer users as part of a European Commission settlement.…

This is fine Newly analysed recruitment figures from British Russell Group universities show a slowing of recruitment of European academics and increasing departures.…

Not working as intended, says browser security team The next version of Google's Chrome web browser, 77, will not indicate whether a site has an EV (Extended Validation) certificate unless the user drills down into the Page Info dialogue.…

Just you wait, Matthew Hancock! Just you wait! UK health secretary Matt Hancock has been accused of being "obsessed by technology" for its own sake following the UK government's vague announcement about injecting £250m into a AI laboratory for the NHS.…

Thousands of tons of metal and iPads don't mix, it would seem The US Navy is ditching touchscreens and going back to physical throttles after an investigation into the USS John S McCain collision partly blamed poor design of control systems for the incident.…

UK industry survey sheds light on ridiculous hours, culture of harassment and bullying The majority of video games devs do long stretches of unpaid overtime, and bullying and harassment is rife within the sector, according to a survey by entertainment trade union BECTU.…

For goodness sake, please don't go reading any printer manuals Who, Me? Welcome to Who, Me?, The Register's weekly column of confessions from the darker corners of our readers' memories.…

You've heard of ROP? Now get a load of QOP DEF CON At the DEF CON hacking conference in Las Vegas on Saturday, infosec gurus from Check Point are scheduled to describe a technique for exploiting SQLite, a database used in applications across every major desktop and mobile operating system, to gain arbitrary code execution.…

Elaborate browser break-out betrayed by unusual behavior Coinbase chief information security officer Philip Martin this week published an incident report covering the recent attack on the cryptocurrency exchange, revealing a phishing campaign of surprising sophistication.…

While so many orgs shift their bytes off prem, here's why you may want to repatriate your information Analysis The concept of cloud repatriation – shifting systems back in house from the cloud – is nothing new. For as long as there have been cloud services, there have been those who have hosted applications and workloads off-premises before bringing them back in.…

DoD daleks want to exterminate Oracle's Vulcan mind-meld with White House The US Department of Defense is pushing back against criticism of its proposed $10bn winner-takes-all cloud mega-deal, dubbed JEDI.…

The benefits of outsourcing your IT's infosec – and what to look for. Here's our gentle guide for you Backgrounder Managed security services are – by revenue – the fastest expanding field of cyber security, according to IDC, which reckons they should grow at a compound annual growth rate of 14.2 per cent to 2022. Gartner says managed and subscription-based security services will account for half of all cyber-security spending by 2020.…

That parping sound you just heard is Mark Zuckerberg paying attention Facebook will face a class-action lawsuit with a payout potential of $35bn over how its photo tagging and facial recognition software works.…

Does this taste off to you? Former Xbox fiddler Seamus Blackley has baked a loaf of bread using yeast extracted from an ancient Egyptian pot.…

Not quite an Android replacement then? Huawei has pulled the sheets off HarmonyOS – a microkernel-based operating system initially aimed at smart TVs, wearables and in-vehicle devices.…

Frankenfirm optimises downwards in fiscal Q1 DXC's stock took a pummelling last night as the outsourcer published a grim set of figures for fiscal Q1 2020.…

Hey, Insiders! Do you feel lucky? Well, do you? Microsoft emitted two fresh builds for October's Windows 10 last night, although which one you'll get depends on your current build or, for new Insiders, a "virtual coin toss".…

National roaming still not a thing Only 20 per cent of UK parliamentary constituencies receive full 4G coverage from all four mobile operators, according to research by consumer charity Which?…

Apart from the poor sods paying for the service, that is Microsoft has blacklisted Brit hosting outfit TSO Host's bulk email domain, meaning anyone trying to send large quantities of mail over its infrastructure cannot deliver it to an Outlook or Hotmail address.…

Your wondrous Amazon smart speaker may be tainted with the paw prints of child labour Updated An investigation by China Labor Watch has found that Amazon's Alexa and Echo devices are being made by child interns, some forced to work night shifts so suppliers can keep up with peak demand.…

Maybe Douglas Adams was right about mice Black Hat Deepfakes, the AI-generated talking heads that can say whatever their creator wants them to, are getting harder to detect. But boffins have enlisted an unlikely ally in the quest for truth – mice.…

Fix for security issue but LibreLogo still installed by default on Windows The Document Foundation has made some tweaks to improve file loading and save times in its word processor and spreadsheet programs in the latest version of LibreOffice, 6.3.…

Legacy security outfit to vanish into the 'rightsizing' grinder Broadcom has swallowed Symantec for a bargain-bin price of $10.7bn (£8.82bn) in cash, boosting the chip maker's enterprise security clout.…

Revenge plan morphs into data leak discovery Black Hat When Europe introduced the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) it was supposed to be a major step forward in data safety, but sloppy implementation and a little social engineering can make it heaven for identity thieves.…

Join us at MCubed and we'll put you in the picture Event If you’re thinking about doing machine learning, one of the first choices you’ll have to make is "what will I actually run on my machines?"…

But hey, the first result worked and you're a legend On Call Welcome back to On Call, The Register's weekly dive into the world of those who live in dread of the surprise pager or midnight phone jangle.…

Holes supposedly plugged, fnar fnar, but Pen Test Partners believes there may be more UK-based security biz Pen Test Partners describes group sex app 3Fun as having "probably the worst security for any dating app we’ve ever seen."…

As it emerges non-internet-connected election systems are actually connected to the internet Black Hat While various high-tech solutions to secure electronic voting systems are being touted this week to election officials across the United States, according to infosec guru Bruce Schneier there is only one tried-and-tested approach that should be considered: pen and paper.…

Apple expands bug bounties, and more from Vegas this week Black Hat Here's a quick summary of some important infosec happenings from inside and outside the Black Hat USA conference in Las Vegas on Thursday.…

Shocking current-affairs news: Cupertino idiot-tax operation hits resistance over harsh repair policy Apple appears to be discouraging owners of recent iPhones from having device batteries serviced by a third-party repair service, an exercise in market control that looks ill-timed amid growing scrutiny of potential anti-competitive moves by tech giants and pushback against limitations on repair rights.…

It's Microsoft so: Embrace, extend, something else beginning with ex? Microsoft's social code biz GitHub on Thursday said its automation system, GitHub Actions, will now play real nice with third-party continuous integration and continuous deployment tools, a duo better known among IT types by its stage name, CI/CD.…

Cortana: tell me a joke. No, I don't mean the terms and conditions... Microsoft emitted an update to next year's Windows 10, aka 20H1, last night, with some tweaked networking and the spreading of the creepier-than-you-might-have-realised Cortana to more Insiders.…

Come on, guys. Do some Seoul searching and break it up Japan has eased controls on exports of key chip manufacturing materials to South Korea – the first relaxation of strict measures introduced last month in an escalating trade war.…

Exploit allows any app to run with full local admin rights on Windows A security researcher has disclosed a vulnerability in Valve Corporation's Steam client, used by millions of Windows PC gamers, even though it has not been fixed because his report was rejected as "not applicable".…

STEM subjects already lose universities £1,400 per student Funding for scientific research could be in jeopardy if the UK government implements plans to cap tuition fees, peers have warned.…

Don't believe the numbers, say security watchers, it's worse than ever Black Hat Ransomware infections may be down, but only because attackers are getting better at targeting them.…

Moscow's 'sovereign internet' effort means new rules for the bad guys too Black Hat The introduction of Russia's Sovereign Internet rules is having an impact on the way criminal hackers around the world do business.…