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Crims SIM swap execs' kids to freak out their parents, Mandiant CTO says RSAC Ransomware infections have morphed into "a psychological attack against the victim organization," as criminals use increasingly personal and aggressive tactics to force victims to pay up, according to Google-owned Mandiant....

And the iOS titan doesn't seem that bothered with data leaking out Last week, Apple began requiring iOS developers justify the use of a specific set of APIs that could be used for device fingerprinting. Yet the iGiant doesn't appear to be making much effort to ensure that Google, Meta, and Spotify comply with the rules, it's claimed....

Microsoft-backed super-lab gets direct access to answers - and code forum gets its own AI Stack Overflow, a community-driven Q&A site, and OpenAI, maker of AI models, have agreed to work to improve each other's products, the latest deal in a series of tie-ups to feed machine learning models' thirst for data....

After very boring first reveal, this could be the real deal Cops around the world have relaunched LockBit's website after they shut it down in February - and it's now counting down the hours to reveal documents that could unmask the ransomware group....

Fake it until you make it, literally The US government on Monday earmarked $285 million in CHIPS Act funding for the development of semiconductor digital twins....

Decentralization is great until everyone wants to grab data from your web server Updated Mastodon has pushed back an update that's expected to fully address the issue of link previews sparking accidental distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks....

'Used in a pro-social way, it's got terrific benefits to society. But, I don't know how you make sure that happens' Video You can add Berkshire Hathaway chief Warren Buffett to the list of folks worried about the implications of artificial intelligence on society....

And you thought consumer electronics suffered from depreciation The Cheyenne Supercomputer, a 5.34 peak PFLOPS behemoth that was once one of the fastest systems in the world, has just been sold at auction for $480,085....

Accused of stealing data after losing his job A cybersecurity expert could face a 20-year prison sentence after being accused of trying to extort a multinational IT infrastructure services biz to the tune of $1.5 million....

It's taking time, but isn't a dead issue, US Government Accountability Office security director Marisol Cruz Cain says interview It's been several years since President Biden signed an executive order to improve America's cybersecurity. The US Government Accountability Office said recently there's still a number of critical goals stemming from that order to accomplish....

Recent attacks on healthcare thrust infosec agency into alert mode CISA is calling on the software industry to stamp out directory traversal vulnerabilities following recent high-profile exploits of the 20-year-old class of bugs....

Users continue to give Microsoft's latest and greatest a wide berth According to market share figures from Statcounter, the gap between Windows 11 and Windows 10 usage is slightly growing, and not in a way we imagine Microsoft wants....

Testing platform for those 'unfamiliar with the subsea environment' Subsea Cloud is offering potential customers the chance to try out its underwater datacenter facilities for up to 90 days before making any further commitments, in a bid to attract new customers to the project....

Thankfully, luck - and a handy greybeard - came to the rescue Who, me? Welcome once again, dear readerfolk, to the sanctuary of Who, Me? in which Register readers can recount the times when their technical skills abandoned them, even if momentarily, without fear of judgment....

ALSO: Microsoft promises to git gud on cybersecurity; unqualified attackers are targeting your water systems, and more infosec in brief It was just around a year ago that a spate of allegedly Russian-orchestrated cyberattacks hit government agencies in Germany, and now German officials claim to know for a fact who did it: APT28, or Fancy Bear, a Russian threat actor linked to the GRU intelligence service....

PLUS: Taiwan's subsea cables, Paytm says goodbye to its CEO, China uses WhatsApp despite roadblocks, and more. ASIA IN BRIEF Google announced the layoff of 200 of its core team professionals last week while moving some roles to India and Mexico, according to reports....

When bad management meets bad software, even great hardware is useless Retrospective Ten years ago Microsoft absorbed the handset division of Nokia. The world's biggest operating systems vendor was going mobile in a big way, and buying the erstwhile world leader in mobile phones to ensure its success....

Internet Society's Robin Wilton tells us the war on privacy won't be won by the plod interview Police can complain all they like about strong end-to-end encryption making their jobs harder, but it doesn't matter because the technology is here and won't go away....

Privacy Not Included label slapped on 22 of 25 top lonely-hearts corners Interview Dating apps ask people to disclose all kinds of personal information in the hope of them finding love, or at least a hook-up....

Facial recognition based on body cam footage? Absolutely not ... in our cloud, says Microsoft An update to Microsoft's Azure Open AI Service code of conduct makes it clear who Redmond doesn't want using its hottest new tech: Cops....

Plus: What our vultures thought of the US v Google trial that's wrapping up Kettle Apple had a moderately glum first three months of the year, though the iGiant found a way to keep the most important people happy. Yes, we mean Wall St....

Say goodbye to 23c and hello to 23ai Oracle has celebrated the general availability of its latest database upgrade by renaming it....

Decline shown in data from StatCounter attributed to 'anomaly' Google's share of web searches appeared to suffer an unusually large drop in April, according to StatCounter. But the metrics biz now says that's incorrect....

Meanwhile, Alma Linux gets into supercomputers Good news for users of RHEL versions old and new - and for the freebie CentOS Linux 7, which is approaching its end of life next month....

Ready, set, sanctions? AI built by Russian infosec firm Kaspersky was used in Russian drones for its war on Ukraine, volunteer intelligence gatherers claim....

Devotees were speaking to an entity who didn't exist - imagine that An attempt by a Catholic advocacy group to spread the word of God using an AI model has backfired, and chat bot - Father Justin - has been pulled down and reworked....

Visual Small BASIC, Chloe System, and QB64 Phoenix all updated May Day 2024 was the 60th anniversary of the BASICprogramming language, and multiple FOSS BASIC-related projects released new versions in celebration....

Why? Maybe because it looks likely VMw Cloud on Amazon is changing Amazon Web Services is doing something rather odd - promoting itself as a migration target for users of its own VMware Cloud on AWS service....

Sure, we're waking to the risk, but we gotta get outta bed, warns Endor Labs founder Varun Badhwar interview The more cybersecurity news you read, the more often you seem to see a familiar phrase: Software supply chain (SSC) vulnerabilities. Varun Badhwar, founder and CEO at security firm Endor Labs, doesn't believe that's by coincidence....

Cupertino drops the Core Technology Fee for hobbyist developers with no revenue Apple is reluctantly bowing to the European Commission's demands that it align iPadOS with the changes planned for iOS. It has also grudgingly added two conditions in which the Core Technology Fee will not apply....

Put another way, iPhone sales were down 8% Apple CEO Tim Cook called China "the most competitive market in the world" on the back of a somewhat poor quarter for the iPhone....

Need a bigger partition for the update? You'll be manually resizing it then Microsoft has decided that there will be no automatic resolution for a problem with some Windows 10 devices as they attempted to install a BitLocker security vulnerability patch....

Euro facility reportedly qualified under Ukraine Enterprise Crisis Scheme Intel was awarded 30 million ($32.2 million) by Ireland last year as part of a state aid package for companies affected by energy price increases....

Heat shield that looks like the surface of the Moon plus fiberglass doors on the launch platform on the list A report from the NASA Office of Inspector General (OIG) provides new insight into the heat shield and power problems that bedeviled its Orion capsule in the uncrewed Artemis I mission and delayed the agency's first crewed mission to the Moon in more than half a century....

Q1 2024 sees strongest growth since Q3 2022 The global cloud market showed strong growth for the first quarter of this year, with the big three providers continuing to consolidate their stranglehold over this vital area of IT services....

If you read about 'meticulous commendable intricacy' there's a chance a boffin had help Linguistic and statistical analyses of scientific articles suggest that generative AI may have been used to write an increasingly large amount of scientific literature....

Rovo will write to-do lists, create graphics, become virtual colleagues to whom you offload scutwork Atlassian is the latest vendor to have a crack at addressing the perennial problem of enterprises scattering data across multiple applications and then finding it's impossible to understand what's happening and why....

Lords committee slams government response to complaints from creators A committee of UK legislators has slammed the government for its response to alleged copyright theft as a "de facto endorsement" of the way tech companies build large language models....

Loyal Wingman has fond memories of memory register exceptions On Call The working week is no game, which is why The Register eases readers into the weekend with a fresh instalment of On Call - our weekly reader-contribute tales recalling the lighter side of tech support....

Relax! It's for low-gravity exercise Astronauts living on the Moon will need to maintain a strict exercise regimen to avoid physical deterioration due to the low gravity, and one proposed solution will have them bouncing off the walls to do so....

Cops prevented crims from bilking victims out of more than 10m - but couldn't stop crime against art A Europol-led operation dubbed Pandora" has shut down a dozen phone scam centers, and arrested 21 suspects. The cops reckon the action prevented criminals from bilking victims out of more than 10 million (8.6 million, $11 million)....

A 'murky' web sees many purchases run through Singapore in a way that hides potential users Indonesia has acquired spyware and surveillance technologies through a "murky network" that extends into Israel, Greece, Singapore and Malaysia for equipment sourcing, according to Amnesty International....

Mac sales rose, iPads predicted to soar, and AI is riding to the rescue Apple has announced the biggest stock buyback in US history: a $110 billion plan to slurp shareholders' scrip....

Bad configurations, insecure versions of jQuery, and crummy cookies are some of myriad problems Exclusive Five Chinese researchers examined the configurations of nearly 14,000 government websites across the country and found worrying lapses that could lead to malicious attacks, according to a not-yet-peer-reviewed study released last week....

I guess the brains down in Africa gonna take some time to do the things they never should have had Starlink's self-imposed end of April deadline to crack down on roaming users who abuse the service has come and gone without appearing to have worked....

Windows giant extends passwordless tech to everyone else Microsoft today said it will now let us common folk - not just commercial subscribers - signinto their Microsoft accounts and apps using passkeys with their face, fingerprint, or device PIN....

You've got to fight for your right to personalize A professor has asked the US courts to confirm he has the right to release a browser extension to help people disengage with Facebook by automatically changing certain settings....

Operation busted after dodgy devices ended up at Air Force Miami resident Onur Aksoy has been sentenced to six and a half years in prison for running a multi-million-dollar operation selling fake Cisco equipment that ended up in the US military....

Ten vulnerabilities in total for admins to apply Network admins are being urged to patch a bundle of critical vulnerabilities in ArubaOS that lead to remote code execution as a privileged user....

Oversecure details bugs spotted and stamped since private disclosure Oversecured, a business that scans mobile apps for security issues, says it has identified more than two dozen vulnerabilities over the past few years affecting Android apps from smartphone maker Xiaomi and Google's Android Open Source Project (AOSP)....