The Register

Google survey finds pros don't like safety strategies preferred by spooks A Google-conducted survey of 231 infosec pros worldwide has reaffirmed the industry's faith in strong passwords, and achieved consensus about nothing else.…

Asia's internet numbers registry let some weakly-hashed passwords into the wild Asia's internet numbers registry APNIC has apologised to network owners after a slip in its WHOIS database config leaked credentials, including weakly-hashed passwords.…

Meg starts the bloodletting in earnest HPE kicked off its much-dreaded layoffs globally on Monday as part of its Next overhaul campaign.…

Plus: A new stealthier Monero crafter emerges Another Chrome extension has been found secretly harboring a cryptocurrency miner – and it appears this issue is going to get worse before it gets better.…

Plus: Azure gets all Cray-cray A below-the-radar security feature in the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, aka version 1709 released last week, can stop ransomware and other file-scrambling nasties dead.…

Seven days of testing and it's not looking good Earlier this month, Google unveiled its new Pixel smartphones to great hullabaloo – and now to great consternation.…

PM says the network's a waste of money? It's also yet another wasted chance at real reform Australia's telecommunications ombudsman last week reported a startling and unwelcome 159.3 per cent year-on-year jump in complaints, with more than 40,000 lodged about services on the national broadband network (NBN).…

Tech slinger hopes this $3bn fraud lawsuit will be over easy Online electronics souk Newegg has been accused of taking part in a financial scam that duped banks in South Korea out of billions of dollars.…

'Tech evangelist' apologizes but sympathy in short supply Analysis The rolling saga of rich and powerful men being identified as serial sexual harassers has returned to Silicon Valley, having spent a few week slicing through Hollywood. Now it's scooped up another well-known tech figure: Robert Scoble.…

Lots and lots of data dumped online plus keys to escape browsers Chrome Dev Summit At the Chrome Dev Summit in San Francisco, California, on Monday, Google took another stab at making HTML-based apps less of a crapshoot.…

Here's what to do if you have an affected badge Some Gemalto smartcards can be potentially cloned and used by highly skilled crooks due to a cryptography blunder dubbed ROCA.…

No Docker or Kubernetes under The Social Network's hood OS Summit Facebook has its own container system it uses in place of Docker or Kubernetes.…

Is Switchzilla trying to buy its way out of legacy? Cisco has snapped up its two-hundredth acquisition in the form of unified comms biz Broadsoft for $1.9bn (£1.4bn) – its latest attempt to move away from its lacklustre legacy business of switches and routers.…

Response to US fretting over alleged ties to Russian snoops Russian cybersecurity software flinger Kaspersky Lab has offered to open up its source code for third-party review.…

Large-scale randomised US trial: 'Recalibrate’ expectations Police forces have been told to temper their expectations of body-worn cameras, as a randomised study involving almost 2,500 US cops throws up little evidence of purported benefits.…

Take the hint, manufacturers of weak kit TechCon Arm hopes to release open-source code early next year that will help secure Internet-of-Things devices – by encrypting their communications and installing over-the-air security fixes.…

'I don’t know if my voice was very bad and that’s why I got the ticket,' he said A man has been fined by police after being caught singing the 1990s dance anthem "Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)" while behind the wheel of his car.…

GSM gateway prosecution man: They gave the evidence that they found to the police A man left on bail for more than seven years has hit out at Vodafone's role in his court case as alleged victim and examiner of vital computer evidence.…

But he gets it, there's a balance to be struck, yada yada The FBI has been locked out of almost 7,000 seized mobile phones thanks to encryption, director Christopher Wray has said.…

Penguins and machine learning. It could happen! OS Summit The Linux Foundation has created one open-data licence framework to rule them all, allowing users to collaborate on data-driven projects.…

Dash of containers, drop of tape, soupcon of advanced RAM... perfect Another week has passed by, and yet another torrent of storage news streams towards us, running the gamut from spin-transfer torque magneto-resistive RAM to data streaming and a Maltese Smart Island hub.…

Hopes to raise £1.5bn and clear debt Britain's biggest mast outfit, Arqiva, has confirmed it will float on the London Stock Exchange next month, a move it hopes will raise £1.5bn and reduce its debt.…

Tech laces networks with decoys to contain breaches Israel-based Illusive Networks claims that its approach of planting poison-pill servers in a network can detect incoming attacks faster than any other method.…

Installed Puppet? Visited a waterfall?... Gooble gobble, ONE OF US... ONE OF US! After roughly a decade of DevOps hype, surely we’ve arrived at that blessed time when developer lions lie down with operations lambs in peace…? Err, not so much. Despite larger enterprises striving mightily to become more Agile (with a capital “A”), most organisations still don’t deliver on the DevOps dream, and won’t for some time.…

I'm... I'm going to sit down and think about that. *Sniff* The web-based version of anonymous feedback app Sarahah is riddled with security flaws, according to a researcher.…

The Man Who Knew Too Much, Jeff Smith, has a new job IBM appears to have succeeded in its efforts to stop its former CIO join Amazon Web Services.…

Blue Origin's new and rather large rocket engine fires on first full test Amazon supremo Jeff Bezos' rocket company Blue Origin has successfully tested its main engine for the first time.…

Matter/antimatter distribution looks equal, which should have nixed the universe at birth One of the outstanding questions in physics is why matter and antimatter didn't wipe each other out at the Big Bang?” A new, hyper-accurate measurement of an antiproton characteristic at CERN leaves that difficult question entirely intact.…

It's a joint venture between Mitsubishi and Digital Realty to do bit barns in Japan Digital Realty and Mitsubishi Corporation have entered a joint venture to build big bit barns in Japan.…

A Prompt response to insecurity Text messages aren't a great way to implement two-factor authentication, but it's a technique that's stubbornly persistent. Now Google has decided to push things along by pushing its alternative into production.…

RC1 for Xen 4.10 is upon us, so get testing, hyper-hipsters The Xen Project has issued the first release candidate for version 4.10 of its hypervisor and set a testing schedule aimed at a December release.…

Meanwhile on Mars, we've found a twisted tail NASA's Dawn spacecraft has received another reprieve, with its mission to dwarf planet Ceres extended for another, closer, flyby.…

Necurs botnet spreads ransomware carried in Office documents The ever-vigilant folk at the Internet Storm Centre (SANS) have spotted yet another campaign trying to drop the Locky ransomware using compromised Word files.…

Micron and Xcelero websites both vanish all-flash array, but we're told it's not dead Micron may have put its SolidScale all-flash array into web site limbo in preparation for big news.…

Q: 'Where in memory did you put that kernel?' A: 'Sorry, I have no idea' The folks at NetBSD have released their first cut of code to implement kernel ASLR – Address Space Layout Randomisation – for 64-bit AMD processors.…

Homeland Security says 'Dragonfly' campaign has cracked networks The United States' Department of Homeland Security has issued an alert that warns of “advanced persistent threat (APT) actions targeting government entities and organizations in the energy, nuclear, water, aviation, and critical manufacturing sectors.”…

Punters refunded for smaller-than-advertised football streams Telstra's been forced to refund users of its live Australian Rules Football streaming service, after promising a hefty 11-inch experience but delivering a less-exciting seven-inch screen.…

Dive in Roundup Hello, this week's roundup includes AI news from the past two weeks. AI is so hyped, it doesn't help when companies like Intel and Nvidia announce new chips and reveal little information about specs, but make lofty claims of increased speed and precision.…

A splash of green stops astronauts feeling blue Living in space is grueling. The repetitiveness of daily exercise, experiments, crappy food, and claustrophobia can chip away at an astronaut’s psychological well-being, but scientists have suggested a preventative measure: plants.…

Free software lovin' crusaders kick out Management Engine Purism – a San Francisco, California, social purpose company that flies the flags of privacy, security and software freedom – has begun offering its GNU/Linux-based laptops with Intel's Management Engine disabled.…

Everything you also need to know in security Roundup IT admins aren't always fond of patching. It's like going to the dentist – it needs to be done but it can be a pain to do. Sadly, this week there was a lot of patching to be done.…

SF startup boss denies charges The cofounder of a San Francisco video advertising upstart has been arrested and charged with allegedly assaulting and sexually abusing his three-year-old son.…

Shocking development in the current affairs circuit A Japanese electronics maker has been indicted in America for fixing the prices of electrolytic capacitors.…

We're not going to fry it, and we're not going to tell you anything more right now It has been three years since Apple released any major update to the Mac Mini family, but CEO Tim Cook says that doesn't mean the minimalist systems are dead.…

Check your cameras, broadband gateways, NAS boxes for latest botnet malware Miscreants are right now assembling a massive army of hacked Internet of Things devices – and at a far faster rate than the powerful Mirai botnet swelled its ranks last year.…

Credit card purveyors aim to improve 'cross-border, B2B payment flows' Mastercard is opening up its blockchain API to select partner banks and merchants.…

Non-compete legal battle Two file sync 'n' sharers are at war. Google-backed Egnyte is suing Citrix for unfair competition and Citrix is counter-suing Egnyte for unfair trade practices, among other things.…

They were totally just about to tell us everything Previously Google has contracted major brand OEMs to produce Nexus and Pixel phones using fairly standard off-the-shelf parts. But a teardown of Google's pricey new flagship reveals the company's first homegrown system on a chip – and it's currently idle.…

Justice committee backs ePrivacy proposals by narrow majority European legislation that aims to put over-the-top services on a level pegging with their more traditional telecoms counterparts, and gives users more rights over websites tracking them, has been approved by a committee of MEPs.…