The Register

Stay ahead of the latest ploys Promo Ransomware has become one of the most damaging threats on the internet. In recent years viruses have proliferated, spreading through spam emails and off-the-shelf malware kits that even criminals with minimal IT expertise can use to hijack and encrypt data, then demand a ransom to unlock it.…

Need a few air-gapped apps on one screen? Here's how Researchers at Australian think tank Data61 and the nation's Defence Science and Technology Group have cooked up application publishing for the paranoid, by baking an ARM CPU and secure microkernel into a KVM switch.…

Probe skipped past Pluto by 12,500km, so this rock needs to prepare for its close-up If we're not all too hungover when New Year's Day 2019 rolls around, NASA will hopefully have a fun set of photos to show us because on that day New Horizons probe has been told to go within just 3,500km of Kuiper Belt Object MU69.…

Fake accounts bought nasty spots about guns and race Facebook has 'fessed up to taking “approximately $100,000 in ad spending” from 470 fake accounts connected to Russia and which published spots “amplifying divisive social and political messages”.…

Flipper heck! Voice control is all the rage these days, but a team of Chinese researchers has come up with a way to subvert such systems by taking a trick from the natural world.…

Please pass the paperwork Qualcomm would like to spend around US$39 billion to acquire NXP Semiconductors, but the European Commission is taking its sweet time over its approval for the takeover.…

So Mozilla's going to give them their very own Tab, perhaps ahead of opt-out slurping Fewer than one per cent of users installing the Firefox browser bother to read the fine print regarding privacy, so the browser's makers at the Mozilla Foundation are going to put it in your face.…

Tells Cisco's Talos it's a feature, not a bug. Apple and Google disasgree and fixed it Which of Google, Apple and Microsoft think a content security bypass doesn't warrant a browser patch?…

WebUSB, WebShare, JavaScript Modules and more due any day now Google has wrapped up coding the desktop version of Chrome 61, and will be rolling it out for Windows, Mac and Linux “over the coming days/weeks”.…

Libel lawsuit bounces A US district judge has dismissed the libel lawsuit entrepreneur Shiva Ayyadurai filed against bloggers who rubbished his claims he invented email.…

Wage rows in limbo as IT giant drags heels over arbitrartion A former Oracle sales rep seeking to resolve a pay dispute has asked a California court to force the company to participate in arbitration over all wage claims against the database giant.…

Astroboffins predict cosmic collision for ice giant Four of the 27 moons orbiting Uranus are on a collision course and will smash into each other, creating new rings around the distant ice giant.…

Astroboffins predict cosmic collision for ice giant Four of the 27 moons orbiting Uranus are on a collision course and will smash into each other, creating new rings around the distant ice giant.…

Tell me again why slower internet is a good thing? America's comms watchdog has extended a comment period on a proposal to downgrade the definition of broadband to a slower speed.…

Strange tale takes a new turn as CEO fights back Analysis The CEO accused of caving in to pressure from Google when she fired an academic that was critical of the online giant has fired back.…

Exciting new problem for microblogging giant to completely ignore Updated Twitter has silently, and without warning, deleted reams of lists users have spent months curating. These lists are used by journalists, activists, and loads of other people, to organize and manage twits they follow and aggregate their tweets, links, photos, and videos.…

Are we looking at an advertising house of cards? Facebook promises advertisers access to more US customers than actually exist.…

Plenty of life left in this dinosaur Oracle plans to accelerate the pace of Java SE releases – and has moved Java EE's code repository to GitHub – in keeping with its avowed desire to step back from managing the beast.…

Plenty of life left in this dinosaur Oracle plans to accelerate the pace of Java SE releases – and has moved Java EE's code repository to GitHub in keeping with its avowed desire to step back from managing the beast.…

Biggest Sun flare in years could be heading our way Those living on the top and bottom of our planet are in for a superb light show over the next few days – as the Aurora Borealis in the north, and Australis in the south, will be on full display.…

Dragonfly dissected Symantec is warning of a resurgence in cyber-attacks against firms in the energy sector by a group of hackers it calls Dragonfly.…

Three reported to be 'interested' in a deal Beleaguered UK comms provider TalkTalk is set to go against the received "wisdom" of having multiple services to flog as it plans to pull out of the mobile market entirely.…

Reapers currently used solely for surveillance France is fitting weapons to its fleet of reconnaissance drones, according to reports.…

Fills storage tank with full-fat 3D NAND SSDs Tintri has refreshed its all-flash arrays with a four-model EC6000 series.…

Roach motel Analysis A year ago, Facebook was denying that it was a media company. No way, not ever. Not us! Then it said it was "not a traditional media company". But quite soon, it could be the media company that you never leave.…

Fancy talking to Virgin and Amazon? Get into the CAA Fancy a crack at bringing space flight to the UK? The Civil Aviation Authority is hiring an innovation manager charged with that plus helping commercialise drone tech – and more.…

WDC leads bijou $16m round for infrastructure build-out Elastifile, an Israeli startup developing a distributed file system for hybrid clouds, has picked up $16m in a funding round led by Western Digital Capital.…

Despite experts' concerns, adoption is rocketing in some parts of the world Analysis A survey on global mobile wallet adoption, published Tuesday, has sparked a lively debate about how banks and fintech might face off in the expanding market for mobile payments.…

Atlas Dynamics produces 'low radar footprint' autonomous flying machine A Latvian drone firm taking a punt at both the professional and military markets reckons its new model can stay aloft for five hours and fly for almost 100 miles (160km).…

European Court of Justice decides general court skipped important analysis In its decade-long battle to reverse a one-time record European Union antitrust fine, Intel has made some small progress: its appeal continues.…

Before you scoff, consider how much we rationalise away what's in front of us Scientists hunting for the secret of how boffin scalpel-fodder favourite Drosophila melanogaster (aka the fruit fly) makes decisions have found some of the brain circuitry active when it makes choices can be linked to what it has already seen.…

More details emerge on how they plan to compete with the big industry players Analysis More details have emerged about Huawei's public cloud. It is like a hydra, a creature with many heads.…

In some cases fraudsters knew their mark's personal details BT customers in the UK have been targeted by scammers in India – with one person reporting they were defrauded for thousands of pounds this week.…

The options when 17.10 drops The Canonical project is gearing up for one of its biggest releases yet. Ubuntu 17.10, due to arrive October 19, will be the company's first release since it abandoned its Unity desktop, Mir display server and the dream of "convergence". Instead Ubuntu users will get the GNOME desktop with a few tweaks that promise to make it a little bit more Unity-like. But Unity-like does not mean it will be at all familiar for long-time Unity users. Make no mistake, Ubuntu 17.10 will be a stock GNOME desktop with a couple of add-ons to improve the overall experience.…

Seagate Kinetic drive idea had Huawei genesis and has Huawei follow-on Analysis Huawei is developing an NVMe over IP SSD with an on-drive object storage scheme meaning radically faster object storage and a re-evaluation of what object storage's very purpose.…

That Windows-Store-apps-only plan doesn't seem to be going down well with Surface buyers Microsoft has quietly extended a free upgrade offer that will allow some buyers of Windows 10 S to move to Windows 10 Pro, a move that suggests buyers aren't entirely happy with the cut-down version of Windows restriction on running apps sourced from beyond Microsoft's own Store.…

Can't fire folk for using personal comms at work. Another great reason for Brexit, eh? Companies operating in the European Union must balance workplace surveillance with employees' privacy rights, the European Court of Human Rights has ruled.…

Crowdfunded submarine maker blames door slip, denies The submarine captain accused of killing a Swedish journalist onboard his homemade vessel says she died when a hatch door accidentally hit her head.…

Accuracy is not great – but it's a start for computer-aided crackdowns by cops Software can take a decent stab at identifying looters, rioters and anyone else who hides their faces with scarves, hats, and glasses, a study has shown.…

'Time for significant board renewal' and perhaps less sound and fury too +COMMENT Five directors of Internet Australia have indicated they will not seek re-election in order to let the organisation renew itself.…

Another glimmer of hope of finding ET on otherwise barren brutal busted-flush dust world Boron, a relatively rare chemical element, has been detected on Mars for the first time. It's a sign there may have been life on the Red Planet.…

Will you continue to invest in the flash fab....purleaze WDC has told Toshiba it will leave the consortium bidding for the stricken Japanese company's memory business, on the condition that the two companies co-invest in a new flash factory that will give WDC a stronger position in the JV.…

Supporters say switch upstart's US trade bans should be lifted, sooner rather than later Upstart Arista has managed to gather some friends in its ongoing battle with Cisco: both HPs, Vizio, two automotive groups and others have filed an amicus brief with the Federal Circuit arguing that the International Trade Commission's (ITC's) ban on some Arista kit be permanently set aside.…

One of these days the 'BootStomp' attack is gonna walk all over your smartmobe University of California Santa Barbara researchers have turned up bootloader vulnerabilities across a bunch of Android chipsets from six vendors.…

Slackers beware, Facebook-owned messaging platform thinks it can charge for chat WhatsApp thinks the time is right for a service that will formally connect its billion daily users to businesses.…

Who needs actual evidence when you're scared about Russia? US Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) simply can't wait to banish Kaspersky Lab's antivirus from American government computers on the grounds it's a security risk.…

Meanwhile, Meg gives the dirt on Uber courtship HPE is showing signs that its turnaround is picking up, as the enterprise IT giant raised its revenues – and on Tuesday talked up a future without its software business.…

What goes up, Musk stay on the ground at this rate Incoming Hurricane Irma is menacing Florida, USA, prompting mandatory evacuations – and threatening to ruin Elon Musk's week too.…

I've been to Bali, via California Typhoons have broken four submarine cables in the crowded Asian sea-lanes, with a knock-on impact for Australian ISPs iiNet and Internode.…

Rep Bridenstine wants to get into space – presumably after we've destroyed this world President Donald Trump this month nominated US House Rep James Bridenstine (R-OK) to be the next NASA administrator.…