The Register

Prof asks: What good comes from letting everyone know a vulnerability exists? A computer engineering professor has an interesting idea for how to handle the public disclosure of serious vulnerabilities: don't.…

Just use manual control, says biz. Then why did we buy 'smart' controls, ask customers Honeywell's remote-control "smart" thermostat platform has been down for a week, leaving thousands of customers fuming.…

Remote scripting flaw in open-source productivity suites is at least partly fixed A security flaw affecting LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice has been fixed in one of the two open-source office suites. The other still appears to be vulnerable.…

Thanks to whip-round from WD investment arm and co Data management startup Komprise has more than doubled its funding, collecting a $24m third round to grow its file-moving and managing tech.…

Hackers can talk to and locate the wearer, warns notice The European Commission has ordered the recall of a smartwatch aimed at kids that allows miscreants to pinpoint the wearer's location, posing a potentially "serious risk".…

Others still can't even get that far It has been a trying time for Microsoft punters after a Windows Defender update left some PCs unable to boot last week, while other folk continue to struggle to even get to the update service.…

GCHQ limb tight-lipped but we can read between the lines Huawei is nursing bruises from a fresh round of bashing in the popular press, this time from a report stating that Britain is to criticise the embattled Chinese telco kit maker over ongoing security vulnerabilities.…

Senior officials briefed on public bodies that still need data milled or stored in EU Senior government officials have reportedly been warned that public bodies are not prepared for the implications on crucial data transfers if the UK leaves the European Union without a deal.…

Are you sitting comfortably? Perhaps not for much longer For many people, the toilet is a place of quiet contemplation, somewhere to escape the pressures of work or home for a while. But that might be over soon – as boffins eye up the data they can collect while you're sitting on the throne.…

TSB TITSUP: Tirelessly Sucky Banking, Total Inability To Shock Us, Period. Totally Shocked Businesses have faced a morning without access to their online accounts following yet another IT meltdown at embattled TSB.…

New exec, new dev toys, and more from the world of Microsoft Roundup Over the past week in MicrosoftLand, Windows Mixed Reality continued its slow shuffle to relevance, a new Project Rome ushered in a world of cross-platform data slinging and Insiders had a play with the latest Skype tweaks.…

Biz's tech lets infoseccers check it won't suck up your data Smut empire Mindgeek's age verification arm, AgeID, has commissioned an independent security assessment and pledged not to store data in a bid to reassure detractors it won't create hackable databases of users' kinks.…

And claim your reward for filling in Western Digital’s storage survey Promo In this rapidly changing, data-centric world, relentlessly driven by new technologies and applications, IT decision makers are increasingly having to anticipate developments and implement solutions that harness the power of data to drive productivity.…

Shaking those digits is HARD: 'eFax' halfway-house to chuck machines and meet targets Leeds Hospital NHS Trust has created what it is calling an "electronic" fax in its bid to ditch the legacy message-slingers.…

Unless he gets off the sofa and finds another job beforehand Oh to be on the executive merry-go-round: BT CEO Gavin Patterson left his post on Friday, but will continue to rake in filthy lucre from the corp until the latter part of October – seven big ones to be precise. That is assuming he doesn't take up a job with a rival in the meantime.…

PMem software hustle for the hyperconverged – if all goes to plan... Analysis NetApp intends to extend its MAX Data persistent memory (PMem) server tiering scheme to its hyperconverged systems, potentially creating hideously fast HCI nodes.…

Whoops! I've broken the internet... but hey, everyone gets a coffee break Who, Me? Monday, bloody Monday. But fear not – Who, Me? has a suitably stressful story to remind you things can always be worse.…

Android apps for TP-Link, LIFX, Belkin, and Broadlink kit found with holes, some at least have been repaired Evaluating the security of IoT devices can be difficult, particularly if you're not adept at firmware binary analysis. An alternative approach would be just to assume IoT security is generally terrible, and a new study has shown that's probably a safe bet.…

The week's other news in AI Roundup Here's a roundup of this week's other AI news. In short: experts continue to snub Amazon's facial recognition service Rekognition, and there's a new deepfake for you to stare at in horror.…

Your rapid-fire guide to all the other infosec news of the week Roundup This was the week we saw GPS grumbles, shady speakers, and Yahoo! Losing! Again!…

Appeals court hears arguments over whether watchdog was right to tear up protections Analysis A year after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was sued for scrapping America's net neutrality rules, the issue finally ended up in court on Friday.…

I would never betray the trust of customers, says man perhaps doing exactly that Comment Some would argue he has broken every ethical and moral rule of his in his profession, but genealogist Bennett Greenspan prefers to see himself as a crime-fighter.…

Can't let go of that old terminology we see. Plus, it now tells you where a nearby device is located Version 5.1 of the Bluetooth wireless networking specification debuted recently, bringing with it the ability to identify the direction of a transmitting Bluetooth device from a receiving antenna – and divisive technical jargon.…

Chipzilla sets final date for the sinking of the Itanic Intel has announced the official, pinky-swear, cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die end to its Itanium line, notifying system makers that production of the server processors will end by mid-2021.…

If you're going to lo-jack your offspring, at least be secure A manufacturer of child-tracking smartwatches was under fire this week following the discovery of a second major security lapse in its technology in as many years.…

Here comes Ahuja again... BOING! ...and he's out of there SpaceX supremo Elon Musk has announced that the company is about to fire up the latest iteration of the engine destined for its huge boosters.…

World+dog could view security answers and more Exclusive Mobile operator Three UK's website was showing visitors other customers' names, postal addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and more – all without asking for a login.…

And if traffic is slow, that's just another efficiency saving New research anticipates congestion problems as owners of self-driving cars allow their steeds to prowl the streets instead of forking out for parking charges.…

UK biz sells to non-UK one that exploits sh!tty exchange rate France Télécom's Orange has bought Brit-based infosec managed services provider SecureData to beef up its defences against the dark arts in the UK.…

Commish also promises audit for the firms' data protection practices The Leave.EU campaign and Brexiteer Arron banks' insurance biz Eldon have been fined a total of £120,000 for dodging direct marketing rules.…

IPCO report also lets us recognise Britain's Creepiest Council 2017 Police employees who make typos in warrants to use Snooper’s Charter spy powers are still getting innocent people arrested, the Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s delayed annual report has revealed.…

Sweeping menace: Winged rats are targeting Brit city's children now – this must stop Nikola Tesla obsessively fed them, the Queen keeps hundreds at Sandringham, and Charles Darwin was enthralled by what they could teach us about natural selection. But for most of us, they're little more than rats with wings. And now one has only gone and shat on a three-month-old's face.…

IT meltdown cost TSB £330m and 80,000 customers IT meltdown bank TSB has reported a £105.4m statutory loss this year, a whopping 165 per cent drop from 2017's profit of £162.7m.…

UK data watchdog's plan to stay on top of Internet of S*'%t The UK's Information Commissioner's Office is on the hunt for organisations that are using personal data in "innovative" products, to help the data protection watchdog understand how to regulate it.…

Logins, IP address, personal data and the kitchen sink at risk Home improvement website Houzz has urged users to reset their passwords after an "unauthorised third party" made off with a file containing customer data.…

Gizmo deafens eavesdroppers, and you can build one yourself Project Alias is a homebrew gizmo that aims to deafen Alexa and Google Home until a user is good and ready for the creepy little cylinders to pay attention.…

Employers won't provide proper comms and insist it's YOUR fault Something for the Weekend, Sir? As I make my way home after a busy day, I often enjoy a knee-trembler by the church wall.…

999, what is your emergency?... Oh sh- On Call The weekend is approaching, dear readers, but before we get there, our weekly column of tech support drama beckons.…

Four of eight lawsuits brought by Qualy against iGiant booted out of German court Apple has won a modest victory in its ongoing global legal war with Qualcomm: four of eight patent lawsuits lodged in Germany by Qualy against Apple were dismissed on Thursday.…

Shock after accelerometers hacked, in the old-school sense, and rock density probed Brainiacs have today revealed how they rejigged instruments aboard NASA’s Martian rover Curiosity to measure changes in the Red Planet's gravity over its surface.…

You have been warned... Tech giants abuse dev program, iPhone maker eventually undoes ban Analysis After briefly punishing Facebook and Google for violating the rules of its enterprise developer program, Apple has relented. Cupertino is in the process of restoring the digital certificates used by Facebook and Google to sign and distribute in-house iOS apps internally to employees, after revoking them within the past 24 hours.…

Revenue growth appears to be slowing, though... Shares down in after-hours Amazon closed out 2018 with a bang, well, a $72.4bn fourth quarter, according to figures released Thursday.…

Never mind these scandals, says social media giant. We're the good guys! Analysis Weathering the blowback from two other missteps this week, Facebook found time on Thursday to provide yet another update on the removal of propagandists from its platform, this time from Iran.…

Yes, let's distract killer neural networks with boredom-killing toys Vid Here’s a robot you could take down the pub with you. It won’t bore you to death with politics and sport, nor add to your round, though it will kill time playing Jenga with you.…

Jizhong Chen accused of copying work drive, snapping pics of highly secretive project A second Apple engineer has been arrested by the Feds for allegedly stealing copies of the tech giant's self-driving car blueprints.…

Swan's throng. Chipzilla's only Swan and done it. And Swan more for luck, etc etc Intel on Thursday filled its vacant CEO slot with the appointment of Robert Swan, who has been moonlighting as interim CEO over the past seven months while simultaneously serving as CFO.…

Networker still mum on Intel slurp rumours though Hot on the heels of Intel's reported acquisitive interest, Ethernet and InfiniBand networker Mellanox has closed out its final quarter of 2018 with an Ethernet-boosted bottom line.…

JSON writing gets snappier while Remond nails its colours to the IoT mast Microsoft has kicked out a second preview of .NET Core 3 and naturally we fired up the IDE to see what has changed.…

Privacy advocates: You're not road builders, you're the traffic authority A war of words – in the form of automotive analogies – has erupted between privacy advocates and the Interactive Advertising Bureau over a General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) complaint filed over ad exchanges.…

Techies exhausted, customers deflated, management tyred... you can't get better Car servicing chain Kwik-Fit has suffered a malware attack that has caused delays in customers' car repairs.…