Fake reviewers face the wrath of Khan
Fake review writers are officially on watch - the US is now enforcing a new rule to ban the practice and is promising a crackdown. "As of today, @FTC's final rule banning fake online reviews and testimonials has come into effect," the head of the agency Lina Khan wrote on X (formerly Twitter). "If you encounter any of these prohibited practices, you can report them to @FTC at: https://reportfraud.ftc.gov." The rules, introduced in August after a lengthy consultation process, could...
about 1 hour ago
Sorry, but the ROI on enterprise AI is abysmal
The deployment of AI projects and associated return on investment (ROI) have declined, according to a large survey of IT decision-makers. Appen, an AI data services company, working with The Harris Poll queried 500 IT decision-makers across various US industries for its report, The 2024 State of AI. The results indicate that despite growing enthusiasm for AI tools for marketing, communications and manufacturing – up 17 percent from 2023 – enterprise deployments and overall ROI are down. According to Appen,...
about 2 hours ago
Qualcomm unveils Snapdragon 8 Elite with custom cores for Android phones
During day one of Qualcomm's Snapdragon Summit in Maui, Hawaii, it unveiled its latest flagship SoC, dubbed the Snapdragon 8 Elite. This marks a pivotal swing into harnessing the technical prowess of its acquired Nuvia team. The new chip is powered by Qualcomm's in-house Oryon cores and moves away from its reliance on Arm's off-the-shelf Cortex cores to drive its flagship mobile SoC. The chipmaker, however, hasn't strayed too far, as the Oryon cores are still based on Arm's v8.7-A...
about 3 hours ago
Western Digital wasn't the only one - Windows 24H2 update bluescreens Asus systems
In yet more problems for this month's Windows 11 24H2 update, Microsoft has warned the new code will cause a Blue Screen of Death on some Asus systems due to hardware compatibility. To say 24H2 is the Windows ME of updates could be a tad harsh, but since its release, the supposed improvement has caused a lot of problems. Old-school users may have been peeved at the loss of WordPad and the coming death of VBScript, but that was the...
about 4 hours ago
TSMC blows whistle on potential sanctions-busting shenanigans from Huawei
TSMC has reportedly tipped off US officials to a potential attempt by Huawei to circumvent export controls and obtain AI chips manufactured by the Taiwanese company. The world's largest semiconductor contract manufacturer sounded the alarm after a customer made orders for a chip resembling Huawei's Ascend 910B, a processor outfitted for training large language models, according to the Financial Times. This follows a report in The Information that the Department of Commerce was probing whether TSMC has been supplying AI...
about 5 hours ago
VMware fixes critical RCE, make-me-root bugs in vCenter - for the second time
VMware has pushed a second patch for a critical, heap-overflow bug in the vCenter Server that could allow a remote attacker to fully compromise vulnerable systems after the first software update, issued last month, didn't work. Plus, in the same security update, VMware fixed (again) a make-me-root flaw in vCenter that's pretty nasty, too. Both bugs were originally patched on September 17. But, as VMware owner Broadcom noted on Monday, the fixes "did not completely address" either CVE. The first...
about 5 hours ago
Tech firms to pay millions in SEC penalties for misleading SolarWinds disclosures
Four high-profile tech companies reached an agreement with the Securities and Exchange Commission to pay millions of dollars in penalties for misleading investors about their exposure to the 2020 SolarWinds hack. Communications tech outfit Avaya, Israeli cybersecurity shop Check Point, and email security biz Mimecast have agreed to fork over $1 million, $995,000, and $990,000, respectively for "making materially misleading disclosures regarding cybersecurity risks and intrusions," the SEC said today. A fourth company, IT services firm Unisys, was also accused...
about 6 hours ago
Akira ransomware is encrypting victims again following pure extortion fling
Experts believe the Akira ransomware operation is up to its old tricks again, encrypting victims' files after a break from the typical double extortion tactics. That's according to James Nutland and Michael Szeliga, security researchers at Cisco Talos, who noted that the decision to revert to old ways is a sign the group is looking for greater stability and efficiency from its affiliate program. Between the two periods of using double extortion tactics, Akira affiliates were mostly just stealing data...
about 7 hours ago
It's about time Intel, AMD dropped x86 games and turned to the real threat
Opinion This week, Intel and AMD set their decades-old rivalry aside to ensure x86 remains relevant amid growing adoption of competing architectures. The formation of the x86 advisory group, announced at OCP in San Jose, California, is a long time coming and frankly, should have happened years ago. The group, which includes folks like Linux-kernel tsar Linus Torvalds and Epic's Tim Sweeney along with the usual cast of hyperscalers, cloud providers, and OEMs, is focused on driving consistency across the...
about 8 hours ago
AI's energy appetite has Taiwan reconsidering the nuclear option
The global surge in AI is placing unprecedented pressure on energy resources, with chipmakers such as TSMC consuming vast amounts of electricity to meet growing demand for advanced silicon. In response, Taiwan's government is signaling a potential shift in its longstanding opposition to nuclear energy to address its mounting power needs. Premier Cho Jung-tai recently provided the clearest indication yet of this potential policy change, citing "surging" energy consumption driven by chipmakers and AI industries. In an interview with Bloomberg,...
about 9 hours ago
Socket plugs in $40M to strengthen software supply chain
Security-focused developer Socket announced on Tuesday it has connected with another $40 million in funding to further its efforts to safeguard the software supply chain. That brings the total raised by the firm – launched in 2021 to develop a scanning mechanism for finding security issues in open source software packages – to $65 million. Feross Aboukhadijeh, founder and CEO of Socket, argued that defending the software supply chain across six programming languages involves tidying up the unruly JavaScript/TypeScript ecosystem....
about 10 hours ago
As Arm rivals cook up custom silicon, Mediatek sticks to tried-and-true Cortex recipe
Interview Arm Holdings has long been the primary architecture for mobile chips since the advent of modern smartphones – its Cortex is quietly humming away inside almost every phone or tablet you can think of. However, with Apple and Qualcomm producing their own custom silicon designs, Arm's market dominance appears less secure. READ MORE Apple is currently using its optimized M3 chips, having moved away from the traditional licensing model to develop proprietary designs. The company is also planning its...
about 11 hours ago
Clock's ticking on PostgreSQL 12, but not everyone is ready to say goodbye
Users of PostgreSQL 12 have less than a month to prepare for the database to enter end of life and become unsupported. Data from open source database support company Percona suggests that around 11 percent of PostgreSQL databases in the wild are still on version 12, first introduced in 2019. First developed in the 1980s, PostgreSQL has been open source since the mid-1990s, managed by the PostgreSQL Global Development Group. Its policy is that after a major release's five-year anniversary,...
about 12 hours ago
Want to feel old? Excel just entered its 40th year
Microsoft Excel, the true successor to the throne of COBOL. Version 1.0 was released on the last day of September 1985, four decades ago. Since the original US English version of Windows 1.0 went to manufacturing at the end of November that year, this means that the default spreadsheet for Microsoft Windows is itself older than Windows. (The European version of Windows didn't appear until May 1986, but that doesn't really matter, nobody cared about it either.) Excel 2 wasn't...
about 13 hours ago
Telcos find cloud migrations, security, are a pain in the IaaS
Telecom companies have consumed only 48 percent of the cloud they have committed to, yet seek to secure more, according to a report released late last week by Infosys. The outsourcing giant's "Cloud Radar – Telecom Industry Report" is compiled from over 400 industry insiders, from mid-level management to execs to C-suites. It concludes that "the industry is significantly increasing cloud spending." The fear is that without more cloud, telcos are not full optimizing their 5G networks efficiently – and...
about 14 hours ago
Major publishers sue Perplexity AI for scraping without paying
Major US news publishers Dow Jones & Co and NYP Holdings have sued AI search engine startup Perplexity for scraping their content without paying for it. The lawsuit, filed on behalf of The Wall Street Journal and its sister tabloid New York Post by their parent company News Corporation, alleges two counts of copyright infringement and one of false designation of origin and dilution of trademarks. The plaintiffs accuse the AI biz of stealing the hard work of journalists to...
about 15 hours ago
Lab-grown human brain cells drive virtual butterfly in simulation
Researchers affiliated with the neuroscience platform FinalSpark have devised a 3D simulation depicting a butterfly that's directed by human brain cells. "It represents a significant step towards the realization of concepts previously confined to science fiction, such as The Matrix, and opens up new avenues for research in cognitive preservation and mind uploading," said software developer Daniel Burger in a summary of the project and an associated video. Youtube Video FinalSpark, a Switzerland-based startup, offers its Neuroplatform so researchers interested...
about 16 hours ago
Pixel perfect Ghostpulse malware loader hides inside PNG image files
The Ghostpulse malware strain now retrieves its main payload via a PNG image file's pixels. This development, security experts say, is "one of the most significant changes" made by the crooks behind it since launching in 2023. The image file format is popularly used for web graphics and is often picked in preference to a lossy compression JPG file because it is a lossless format and retains key details such as smooth text outlines. Elastic Security Labs' Salim Bitam noted...
about 17 hours ago
India, Nvidia, discuss jointly developed AI chip
India's government is reportedly in talks with Nvidia to co-develop AI silicon. Local outlet the Economic Times on Tuesday quoted minister for electronics and IT Ashwini Vaishnaw as confirming "Yes, we are discussing with Nvidia the development of an AI chip; discussions are at a preliminary stage." Just what's being discussed is not known, but India is definitely keen to develop a semiconductor manufacturing industry and to expand its already-substantial role as a source of chip design talent. New Delhi...
about 18 hours ago
China Telecom's next 150,000 servers will mostly use local processors
Most years, China Telecom posts a tender for new servers to help it run the apps it needs to serve its hundreds of millions of customers. This year, its 150,000-plus orders will mostly go to domestic manufacturers who use local tech. China Telecom is one of the big three state-owned telcos that dominate the Middle Kingdom's comms market. As of September 2024 the carrier claimed it served 442 million mobile subscriptions and 196 million wired broadband services. The massive firm...
about 19 hours ago
Intern allegedly messed with ByteDance's LLM training cluster
ByteDance has terminated an intern for "maliciously interfering" with a large language model training project. The parent company of TikTok addressed rumors that had been circulating around the internet in a statement it posted on its news aggregation platform Toutiao. "Recently, some media said that 'ByteDance's large model training was attacked by interns', and after internal verification by the company, there were indeed serious violations of discipline … in the commercial technical team, and the intern has been dismissed," wrote...
about 20 hours ago
US leans on Japan to curb sales of chipmaking equipment to China
The "chip wars" between the US and China have taken a new turn with members of a House Select Committee threatening action against Japanese companies if the country does not do more to restrict sales of chipmaking kit to China. In a letter sent to the Japanese Ambassador to the US, two representatives of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party urged greater action to address the flow of semiconductor manufacturing equipment from Japan to Chinese companies. Republican...
about 21 hours ago
Drone maker DJI sues Pentagon over ‘Chinese military company’ label
Chinese drone maker DJI has sued the US Department of Defense, alleging it was added to a list of companies affiliated with the Chinese military and denied the opportunity to protest its innocence. DJI filed the lawsuit [PDF] last week to protest its inclusion on the DoD's list of Chinese military companies (CMCs), insisting that it isn't owned or controlled by the nation's military forces, and that it doesn't manufacture drones for military purposes. DJI said it filed the lawsuit...
about 22 hours ago
US moves ahead with crackdown on data brokers selling to six 'countries of concern'
The US federal government is poised to implement an Executive Order that would ban data brokers selling significant amounts of information to buyers in six countries. On February 28, President Biden issued an Executive Order [PDF] - "Preventing Access to Americans’ Bulk Sensitive Personal Data and United States Government-Related Data by Countries of Concern". The order empowered the Department of Justice to block data sales to unfriendly countries, namely China (including Hong Kong and Macau), Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia,...
about 23 hours ago
China’s Spamouflage cranks up trolling of US Senator Rubio as election day looms
China's Spamouflage disinformation crew has been targeting US Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida) with its fake news campaigns over the past couple of months, trolling the Republican lawmaker's official X account and posting negative stories about Rubio on Reddit and Medium. This is according to Clemson University researchers Darren Linvill and Patrick Warren, who note that this isn't the first time that the Beijing-linked trolls have set their sights on Rubio. And if the 2022 election is any indication, we can...
about 24 hours ago
Sophos to snatch Secureworks in $859M buyout: Why fight when you can just buy?
British security biz Sophos has announced a plan to gobble up competitor Secureworks in an $859 million deal that will make Dell happy. The server maker bought Secureworks in 2011, and tried to spin it off five years later in a somewhat failed IPO, but retained a majority stake. The deal with Sophos (and its owner private equity security empire-builder Thoma Bravo) represents a about 28 percent boost on Secureworks' current stock price with an $8.50 per share cash offer....
1 day ago
Microsoft says its Copilot AI agents set to tackle employee tasks in November
Since announcing Copilot Studio last year, Microsoft claims it has achieved significant efficiency gains across multiple business units using its tools. Starting next month, customers will be able to put those claims to the test. The service provides a no-code-style interface for building task-specific AI agents to automate employee tasks. If you're not familiar with the concept of AI agents, this refers to applications that use a combination of large language or vision models, sometimes more than one, and conventional...
1 day ago
The billionaire behind Trump's 'unhackable' phone is on a mission to fight Tesla's FSD
Interview This month, presidential hopeful Donald Trump got a tool in his arsenal, some allegedly "unhackable" communications kit, and The Register has talked to the man behind the operating system, who also ran for the US Senate on a campaign to get self-driving Teslas off the road and is on something of a crusade about the matter. Dan O'Dowd, founder of Green Hills Software, is a curious character - a little-known billionaire who has earned his spurs writing very secure...
1 day ago
China ramps up semiconductor patents amid US export restrictions
China's semiconductor industry is speeding up in response to US export controls, according to research by a specialist in intellectual property. According to IP firm Mathys & Squire, semiconductor patent applications worldwide spiked by 22 percent, jumping from 66,416 in 2022-23 to 80,892 in 2023-24. Leading the charge is China, whose filings surged by 42 percent from 32,840 to 46,591, outstripping every other region. Why the rush? In short, Washington's export controls. With restrictions cutting China off from the world's...
1 day ago
Musk's $1M election lottery raises serious legal concerns, says Pennsylvania governor
Elon Musk's plan to give $1 million each day to a random registered "swing state" voter who has signed his election petition could merit a look for election law violations, Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro said over the weekend. Shapiro's comments on NBC's Meet the Press Sunday came the day after Musk's first cash prize for signing "in support of the Constitution, especially freedom of speech and the right to bear arms" was handed out at a rally in Harrisburg, PA....
1 day ago
SiFive launches early access for Premier P550 RISC-V developer board
Prominent RISC-V protagonist SiFive has announced early access to its anticipated development board, built around the firm's P550 core design, with a broader release scheduled for December. The HiFive Premier P550 board is available now, if you can call a pre-release batch of 100 boards with Yocto Linux making the product available. These have been dubbed the "Early Access Edition" and are ready to purchase through Arrow Electronics in the US for $599. The broader release in December will come...
1 day ago
Gary Marcus proposes generative AI boycott to push for regulation, tame Silicon Valley
Interview Gary Marcus, professor emeritus at New York University and serial entrepreneur, is the author of several books, the latest of which takes the tech industry to task for irresponsibly developing generative AI and putting democracy at risk. The Register recently corresponded with Marcus to learn more about his work and his concerns. The Register: The title of your new book is Taming Silicon Valley: How we can ensure that AI works for us. Why does Silicon Valley need to...
1 day ago
ASML faces turbulence amid stock drop, customer delays
Analysis ASML, the sole provider of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines, is navigating market and geopolitical challenges that are hammering its business operations. Despite its critical role in supplying advanced lithography equipment, the company has been grappling with a sharp decline in stock value. This drop, coupled with delays from key clients such as Samsung and ongoing US-led export bans targeting China, is putting severe pressure on ASML and these obstacles may alter the company's trajectory in the near term....
1 day ago
macOS HM Surf vuln might already be under exploit by major malware family
In revealing details about a vulnerability that threatens the privacy of Apple fans, Microsoft urges all macOS users to update their systems. The bug, tracked as CVE-2024-44133 (CVSS 5.5) and patched in September's macOS Sequoia updates, is believed to be potentially exploited by the Adloader macOS malware family, Microsoft's Jonathan Bar Or said. A successful exploit could potentially allow an attacker to take photos using a device's camera, record audio from its microphone, disclose the user's location, and more. The...
1 day ago
Big browsers are about to throw a wrench in your ad-free paradise
Both uBlock Origin and its smaller sibling, uBlock Origin Lite, are experiencing problems thanks to browser vendors that really ought to know better. Developer Raymond Hill, or gorhill on GitHub, is one of the biggest unsung heroes of the modern web. He's the man behind two of the leading browser extensions to block unwanted advertising, the classic uBlock Origin and its smaller, simpler relation, uBlock Origin Lite. They both do the same job in significantly different ways, so depending on...
1 day ago
Developer pockets $2M in savings from going cloud-free
The web software biz that decided to exit the cloud after racking up a huge bill says it has saved almost $2 million in its first "clean year" after making the switch to on-prem, and has already recouped the costs of the extra hardware it needed. A couple of years ago, 37signals was aghast to find it had run up charges of $3,201,564 on cloud services, a large chunk of which was going to Amazon Web Services (AWS), as The...
1 day ago
SCC, one of Europe's largest resellers, orders staff back to their desks for three days a week
Exclusive SCC, one of Europe's largest resellers, is ordering staff to return to the office for three days a work from the start of next month, and terminating its flexible hours trial. As is happening at many organizations in the world of tech, SCC is formally reverting to a more traditional style of working. This also applies to staff that specifically baked work-from-home clauses into their employment contracts. READ MORE James Rigby, CEO at the £3.4 billion reseller, told The...
1 day ago
UK authority struggles to RISE with SAP, throws another £9M at project
A South West England authority continues to suffer control weaknesses in its ERP system after the council delayed the project by more than a year and more than doubled the expected costs. Gloucester County Council said in a meeting last month there were a number of control weaknesses in SAP ECC – which first went live in 2007 – including issues with the segregation of duties within SAP. The replacement system – a cloud implementation of SAP's S/4HANA – was...
1 day ago
The Astronaut wore Prada – and a blast from Michael Bloomberg
Private sector space outfit Axion and Italian fashion house Prada last week revealed the space suit that will be used on the Artemis III mission. Sorry, it's not a space suit. It's an "Extravehicular Mobility Unit" – because it works just as well for eight-hour spacewalks or a two-hour stroll in the ultra-frigid conditions found in the permanently shadowed regions of the Moon's South Pole. Eight-hour spacewalks are made possible by the presence of "a regenerable carbon dioxide scrubbing system...
1 day ago
Linux admin asked savvy scientist for IT help and the boffin blew it
Who, Me? Welcome, gentle reader, to another exciting week at the coalface of tech and therefore the anticipation of five joyous productive days ahead and a fresh edition of Who, Me? – The Register's reader-contributed tales of tech gone awry. This week's main character we'll Regomize as "Igor" because he used to work in a lab back in the day. The lab was full of networked computers, but none of the boffins – for Igor was a boffin – knew...
1 day ago
Microsoft's Arm-based Cobalt 100 CPU now live and powering Azure VMs
Microsoft's Cobalt 100 Arm CPUs have reached general availability in its Azure cloud, creating another non-x86 option for running VMs in the Redmondian cloud. The processors power three instance types: the Dpsv6, Dplsv6, and Epsv6. The first two instance types are intended for general purpose computing. The Dpsv6 instances offer VMs ranging from two virtual CPUs and 8GiB of memory at list price of $51 a month all the way to monsters with 96 vCPUs and 384GiB of RAM that...
1 day ago
Tesla, Intel, deny they're the foreign company China just accused of making maps that threaten national security
Tesla has denied it was involved in illegal-map making activities in China after Beijing asserted an unnamed foreign firm working on a smart car project had done so – and even stolen state secrets – through a collaboration with a local business. The Ministry of State Security (MSS) last Wednesday accused the unnamed firm of evading supervision and hiding its true motive, and equated it to spying. "According to China's laws and regulations, the original data of surveying and mapping...
1 day ago
Chinese chipmaker Loongson now just three to five years off the pace on the desktop
Chinese chip designer Loongson last week teased products that it claimed will deliver the same performance that Intel and AMD achieved around five years ago. Loongson develops its own instruction set architecture called LoongArch that draws on RISC-V and MIPS and is thought to rely more on the latter. The processors aren't leading edge, but that hasn't stopped the likes of Lenovo porting software to LoongArch – probably thanks to China's government strongly encouraging use of locally created product. The...
2 days ago
Internet Archive exposed again – this time through Zendesk
Despite the Internet Archive's assurances it's back on its feet after a recent infosec incident, the org still appears to be in trouble after parties unknown claimed to hold access tokens to its Zendesk implementation and to have used them to send a mass email blast. The claim was made on Sunday in the form of an email sent to those who have tried to interact with the Archive (IA) and had their requests routed to Zendesk – the SaaSy...
2 days ago
AI 'bubble' will burst 99 percent of players, says Baidu CEO
Asia In Brief Baidu CEO Robin Li has proclaimed that hallucinations produced by large language models are no longer a problem, and predicted a massive wipeout of AI startups when the "bubble" bursts. "The most significant change we're seeing over the past 18 to 20 months is the accuracy of those answers from the large language models," gushed the CEO at last week's Harvard Business Review Future of Business Conference. "I think over the past 18 months, that problem has...
2 days ago
WinAmp's woes will pass, but its wonders will be here forever
Opinion Yup, I called that one wrong. Twenty years ago. I bid farewell to WinAmp, the PC music player of choice. It had been made redundant by Windows Media Player getting better, WinAmp's owners getting bored, and the iPod blowing the doors off everything. As one of the first accessible Windows MP3 players, WinAmp was openly fun and introduced the world to party playlists and, briefly, the idea that early adopter geekery could confer actual social cachet. It was iconic,...
2 days ago
Open source LLM tool primed to sniff out Python zero-days
Researchers with Seattle-based Protect AI plan to release a free, open source tool that can find zero-day vulnerabilities in Python codebases with the help of Anthropic's Claude AI model. The software, called Vulnhuntr, was announced at the No Hat security conference in Italy on Saturday. "The tool does not simply paste some code from the project and ask for analysis," explained Dan McInerney, lead AI threat researcher at Protect AI, who developed the software with colleague Marcello Salvati. "It automatically...
3 days ago
California cops cuff suspect in deadly drone-assisted drug deal
A California man has been charged with using a DJI drone to distribute drugs, which resulted in a fatal overdose. According to the Central District of California DA’s office, on January 17, 2023, Christopher Patrick Laney, 34, also known as "Crany," allegedly used an unregistered DJI FPV drone to transport a packet of fentanyl from his home to a third party who was waiting in a nearby church parking lot. It was then sold to a local woman, identified as...
3 days ago
Europa Clipper heads to Jupiter: Can its icy moon support life?
The Europa Clipper has unfurled its solar panels and is on its way to Jupiter, but it's taking a circuitous route by way of Mars. The launch itself went off without a hitch, much to the relief of the assembled scientists, engineers, and mission specialists. Millions of hours of work could have been blotted out in an instant if the Falcon Heavy hadn't kept its 100 percent success rate. "It's highly stressful, I never enjoy the launches," Dr Sascha Kempf,...
4 days ago
Jetpack fixes 8-year-old flaw affecting millions of WordPress sites
in brief A critical security update for the near-ubiquitous WordPress plugin Jetpack was released last week. Site administrators should ensure the latest version is installed to keep their sites secure. Jetpack is a WordPress plugin developed by Automattic, offering features like antispam filtering, site analytics, and more. It released security patches for 101 different versions going all the way back to 2016's version 3.9.9, which introduced a flaw that's been present in the product ever since. "During an internal security...
4 days ago
Tesla FSD faces yet another probe after fatal low-visibility crash
Tesla is facing yet another government investigation into the safety of its full self driving (FSD) software after a series of accidents in low-visibility conditions. In its latest opening resume [PDF] into a Tesla FSD investigation, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said that it's taking a look at Tesla self-driving systems due to four accidents, one involving an injury and another fatally striking a pedestrian. All four accidents occurred in "an area of reduced roadway visibility conditions" with...
4 days ago
X to allow third parties to train their AI models with social media users' data
Elon Musk's social media mouthpiece X (formerly known as Twitter) has updated its Terms of Service and Privacy Policy to direct disputes to a federal court in Texas and allow third parties to train AIs on user posts. The updates will allow "third-party collaborators" access to user data, although it appears there will be some form of opt-out added. The specific paragraph reads: The policy does not clarify the setting for opting out of data slurping. There is an option...
4 days ago
AWS boss: Don't want to come back to the office? Go work somewhere else
AWS CEO Matt Garman has reportedly told workers that if they don't like the company's five-day-a-week return-to-office policy, they can look for work elsewhere. Garman's comments were made at an all-hands meeting, reported by Reuters. They followed Amazon CEO Andy Jassy's September memo informing staff that everyone was expected back at their desk five days a week from the start of 2025. "If there are people who just don't work well in that environment and don't want to, that's okay,...
4 days ago
Spectre flaws continue to haunt Intel and AMD as researchers find fresh attack method
Six years after the Spectre transient execution processor design flaws were disclosed, efforts to patch the problem continue to fall short. Johannes Wikner and Kaveh Razavi of Swiss university ETH Zurich on Friday published details about a cross-process Spectre attack that derandomizes Address Space Layout Randomization and leaks the hash of the root password from the Set User ID (suid) process on recent Intel processors. The researchers claim they successfully conducted such an attack. Spectre refers to a set of...
4 days ago
Tech giants set to pay through the nose for nuclear power that's still years away
Nuclear power contracts signed by hyperscalers show they're desperate for reliable "clean and green" energy sources to feed their ever-expanding datacenter footprints, however, investment bank Jefferies warns that these tech giants are likely to end up paying over the odds to get it. This week alone, Google and Amazon both confirmed more agreements. Google said it had lined up a deal to purchase nuclear energy from Kairos Power, even though the prospectve supplier hasn't yet developed the small modular reactors...
4 days ago
Alleged Bitcoin crook faces 5 years after SEC's X account pwned
An Alabama man faces five years in prison for allegedly attempting to manipulate the price of Bitcoin by pwning the US Securities and Exchange Commission's X account earlier this year. The feds arrested 25-year-old Eric Council Jr this week over the alleged conspiracy, which was said to be supported by other unnamed individuals. When the SEC's X account was briefly compromised, it published a post falsely announcing that the regulator approved Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which caused the price of...
4 days ago
Richard Branson to take balloon ride to edge of space
Richard Branson is taking to the skies again, this time hitching a ride to the top of the Earth's atmosphere in a Space Perspective balloon. The mission, planned for 2025, was announced in the wake of a successful development flight in September when an uncrewed test capsule was taken 100,000 feet up and back during a six-hour trip. Further uncrewed tests are scheduled before Space Perspective founders Jane Poynter and CTO Taber MacCallum board the capsule for the first crewed...
4 days ago
ESET denies it was compromised as Israeli orgs targeted with 'ESET-branded' wipers
ESET denies being compromised after an infosec researcher highlighted a wiper campaign that appeared to victims as if it was launched using the Slovak security shop's infrastructure. Kevin Beaumont blogged about an Israeli biz that said it was infected with a wiper after a staffer clicked a link in an email seemingly sent from the ESET Advanced Threat Defense Team in Israel. The email itself passed DKIM and SPF checks against ESET's domain, said Beaumont, although according to a screenshot...
4 days ago
Someone's finally taking on £10M Hull City Council ERP deal to replace Oracle
More than two and a half years after it began talking to vendors, a city council in northern England has awarded a contract to Workday for £10.7 million ($14 million) to create a finance and HR system that will replace the ageing Oracle ERP installation. Unitary authority Hull City Council awarded the contract for seven years with an option to extend for an additional three years, according to a contract notice. The deal includes software as a service and implementation...
5 days ago
HashiCorp unveils 'Terraform 2.0' while tiptoeing around Big Blue elephant in the room
HashiCorp's annual HashiConf shindig wrapped up in Boston with a Big Blue elephant in the room and a hissed instruction: "Don't mention IBM!" That the conference was in the unspoken shadow of the impending IBM acquisition was a shame since the company unveiled some useful, if not earth-shattering, updates to its product line, including a focus on Security and Infrastructure Lifecycle Management. As Reg readers know, HashiCorp is all about tools to provision, manage, and secure cloud infrastructure. Its move...
5 days ago
Yes, your network is down – you annoyed us so much we crashed it
On Call By the end of a working week, it can be tempting to just blow up whatever tech you've toiled for days to tame. Which is why each Friday The Register offers a (hopefully) cathartic instalment of On Call, the reader-contributed column in which you share your tetchiest tech support tales. This week meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Iain" who once worked for an IT services provider whose clientele included the publishers of a quarterly magazine. "They tried...
5 days ago
Server-maker Wiwynn expands $61M lawsuit against X
Taiwanese contract manufacturer Wiwynn has added two more counts to its complaint against Elon Musk's social network X, alleging hasn't paid for hardware it had contracted to buy. Wiwynn filed a complaint [PDF] against X in August, stating that in 2014 it contracted with Twitter to provide "unique, custom-designed IT infrastructure products including rack solutions." The products Wiwynn built, and which were used in Twitter's datacenters, were a bit funky. "The components used to build the products are largely unique...
5 days ago
Intel hits back at China's accusations it bakes in NSA backdoors
Intel has roundly rebutted Chinese accusations that its chips include security backdoors at the direction of the US National Security Agency (NSA). The accusations were made earlier this week from industry group the Cybersecurity Association of China (CSAC) which alleged Chipzilla had embedded a backdoor "in almost all" of its CPUs since 2008 as part of a "next-generation security defense system." The Association also alleged Intel's products often include exploitable vulnerabilities and have high failure rates. "Intel's major defects in...
5 days ago
Biz hired, and fired, a fake North Korean IT worker – then the ransom demands began
It's a pattern cropping up more and more frequently: a company fills an IT contractor post, not realizing it's mistakenly hired a North Korean operative. The phony worker almost immediately begins exfiltrating sensitive data, before being fired for poor performance. Then the six-figure ransom demands – accompanied by proof of the stolen files – start appearing. Secureworks' incident responders have come across this pattern during "numerous investigations," we're told. And "multiple" tactics used in these scams align with North Korea's...
5 days ago
Someone's tried sneaking semiconductor secrets out of South Korea's patent office
South Korea announced new measures on Thursday to prevent future leaks of technology from its patent office, after noticing increasing incidence of leaks and worrying that it could hurt local companies when stolen IP goes overseas. According to the nation's Ministry of Economics and Finance, the patent office experienced 97 attempts to leak technology overseas – 40 of which related to semiconductors, while a further 18 targeted display tech. Thirty-one attacks were identified as targeting "national core technology." The total...
5 days ago
Healthcare Services Group discloses 'cybersecurity incident' in SEC filing
Healthcare Services Group (HSG) has disclosed "unauthorized activity within some of its systems" in a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing. The company, which provides housekeeping, laundry, and food and nutrition services to thousands of US healthcare facilities, said in a Form 8-K filing on Wednesday that it suffered a "cybersecurity incident" on October 9. "The Company immediately activated its Cybersecurity Incident Response Process to investigate such activity with the assistance of leading third-party cybersecurity experts," the filing states. "The...
5 days ago
Uncle Sam puts $10M bounty on Russian troll farm Rybar
The US has placed a $10 million bounty on Russian media network Rybar and a number of its key staffers following alleged attempts to sway the upcoming US presidential election. Rybar, according to the US, has consistently tried to stoke division within the country. Specifically, Rybar manages the social media channels #HOLDTHELINE and #STANDWTHTEXAS, both of which promote pro-Russia political interests. Both taglines have also become synonymous with pro-Republican voting in the US, while the former has even been used...
5 days ago
Destiny Robotics settles SEC case over AI-powered human robot vaporware
The SEC has reached a deal with defunct Destiny Robotics after investors lost all their capital when the startup failed to produce the promised product. Destiny Robotics launched in 2021 and pledged to build an AI-powered holographic assistant, due out in 2022, and a full humanoid robot the following year. In March 2023, the startup reported it raised $141,455 from 145 investors on Wefunder but the SEC asserts CEO Megi Kavtaradze wasn't developing a viable product and didn't disclose her...
5 days ago
Troubled US insurance giant hit by extortion after data leak
US insurance provider Globe Life, already grappling with legal troubles, now faces a fresh headache: an extortion attempt involving stolen customer data. In a report to the US Securities and Exchange Commission published today, Globe Life said it was recently contacted by an unknown threat actor asking for money in exchange for not publishing "certain information held and used by the Company and its independent agents." The insurer said it doesn't expect the extortion attempt to have any impact on...
5 days ago
FCC fines be damned, ESPN misuses emergency alert tones yet again
Sports broadcasting network ESPN faces a proposed fine for using emergency alert service (EAS) attention sounds without authorization - again, apparently. The Federal Communications Commission published an order today finding ESPN liable for six instances of broadcasting EAS sounds not to notify the public of an actual emergency, but to advertise its upcoming coverage of the NBA basketball season. "Transmitting EAS Tones in the absence of an actual emergency is not a game," FCC Enforcement Bureau Chief Loyaan A. Egal...
5 days ago
Qualcomm 'pausing' X-Elite Dev Kit, offering refunds
Qualcomm has officially pulled the plug on its Snapdragon for Windows Dev Kits less than five months after the X-Elite powered mini-PCs were announced. In a statement to customers this week, Qualcomm announced it was "pausing" the product and support and would be issuing refunds to customers who'd shelled out $899 for the Arm-compatible system. "The launch of 30+ Snapdragon X-series powered PC's is a testament to our ability to deliver leading technology and the PC industry's desire to move...
5 days ago
Samsung releases 24Gb GDDR7 DRAM for testing in beefy AI systems
Samsung has finally stolen a march in the memory market with 24 Gb GDDR7 DRAM being released for validation in AI computing systems from GPU customers before production - expected early next year - kicks off. Hitting the 24 Gb mark before other DRAM makers will be a welcome relief for the South Korean chaebol as it seeks to overcome the semiconductor division's recent failings. Samsung is claiming the newly developed chips provide a 30 percent plus boost in power...
5 days ago
Microsoft crafts Rust hypervisor to power Azure workloads
Microsoft earlier this month published code for a new hypervisor, or virtual machine monitor (VMM), written in Rust. OpenVMM is a type 2 hypervisor, which runs atop an operating system, as opposed to a type 1 hypervisor that runs on bare metal and interacts directly with hardware. Thus it has more in common with Oracle VM VirtualBox, VMware Workstation, or Microsoft Virtual PC than VMware ESXi, KVM, or Microsoft Hyper-V. Rust turns out to be rather popular for virtualization. Cloud...
5 days ago
Infrastructure giant Schneider Electric powers up with $850M liquid cooling deal
Schneider Electric is taking a controlling interest in Motivair Corporation, a specialist in liquid cooling and thermal management tech for high-performance computing (HPC) systems. Under the terms of the purchase, Schneider Electric is buying a 75 percent controlling interest in Motivair for an all-cash transaction of $850 million, and intends to buy the rest later. The acquired biz will slot into Schneider Electric's Energy Management division which houses direct-to-chip liquid cooling and thermal technologies. French HQ'd Schneider Electric has long...
5 days ago
Manifest file destiny: Declare your funding needs via JSON
Zerodha, an India-based stock brokerage, has launched a fund to support open source software, to which the company attributes its existence and success. In order to apply, all that's required is publishing a funding.json manifest file on the open source project's website or code repository and submitting the URL to a fund directory. Kailash Nadh, CTO of Zerodha, announced the $1 million annual funding commitment for Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FOSS/FLOSS) projects. (Free software and open source software have...
5 days ago
Western Digital releases firmware fix for SSDs blighted by Windows 11 24H2 BSODs
Microsoft says it is looking into reports that certain Western Digital SSDs are causing trouble for users of Windows 11 24H2 on some devices. The problem was first noted by WindowsLatest.com, and a lengthy thread in the Western Digital forums documents the attempts users have made to deal with it. A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed to The Register that it was aware of the complaints and is investigating. At the time of writing, the company hasn't added the glitch to the...
5 days ago
Brazilian police claim they've cuffed serial cybercrook behind FBI and Airbus attacks
Brazilian police are being cagey with the details about the arrest of a person suspected to be responsible for various high-profile data thefts. The policia federal, aka the "PF," seized the suspect on Wednesday, noting they were being held in connection to online assaults on the FBI's InfraGard, Airbus, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the PF itself. The arrested individual wasn't named, although people didn't have to pull a muscle to make the connection to USDoD – the...
5 days ago
HMD delivers Android Digital Detox feature to stop you scrolling your life away
A couple of months after launch, an OS update has delivered one of the Nokia HMD Skyline's headline features. We took a look at HMD's Skyline repairable smartphone in August. This month, a software update has enabled one of the more interesting features of this user-repairable mid-range Android fondleslab – selective social media blocking. HMD is the company that makes modern Nokia-branded handsets, and it markets some of them – essentially its 21st century feature devices – as "detox phones."...
5 days ago
TSMC revenue up 36% as world+dog demands AI and smartphone chips
Taiwan's semiconductor giant TSMC has reported a good third quarter with revenue up 36 percent over a year ago, due to strong demand from chip companies for smartphone and AI-related silicon. The world's largest semiconductor contract manufacturer said its income for the third quarter ended September 30, 2024 stood at $23.50 billion in US dollars, a 36 percent jump in US dollar figures on the same period last year and 12 percent up on the previous quarter. Shares in TSMC...
5 days ago
Post Office CTO had 'nagging doubts' about Horizon system despite reliability assurances
The former CTO of the Post Office had "nagging doubts" about the Horizon system at the center of one of the most far-reaching miscarriages of justice in UK history, yet he continued to sign off statements to MPs attesting to its security and reliability. Horizon is an EPOS and back-end finance system for thousands of Post Office branches around the UK, first implemented by ICL, a technology company later bought by Fujitsu. From 1999 until 2015, around 736 subpostmasters and...
5 days ago
Elon Musk's disaster relief promises: Should we believe the hype?
Opinion I live in Asheville, North Carolina. You may have seen my hometown in the news over the last few weeks after Hurricane Helene wrecked the place. Many nearby smaller Blue Ridge Mountain communities, such as Swannanoa, Marshall, and Chimney Rock, have been "wiped off the map." At last report, there were 72 dead in my area. There will be more. Many are still missing and presumed dead. With all that, not having power, water, internet, or cell service is...
6 days ago
UK electronics firms want government to stop taxing trash and let them fix it instead
A newly formed group of UK electronics companies is advocating for the removal of VAT on electronic spare parts, repairs, and labor in the government's upcoming autumn budget, claiming this would encourage consumers to get kit repaired instead of replacing it. The group, which calls itself CLEAR (Circular Leadership for Electronics and Recycling), says it aims to address the growing issue of electronic waste and the barriers preventing consumers from repairing rather than replacing electrical items. Members of the group...
6 days ago
WeChat devs introduced security flaws when they modded TLS, say researchers
Messaging giant WeChat uses a network protocol that the app's developers modified – and by doing so introduced security weaknesses, researchers claim. WeChat uses MMTLS, a cryptographic protocol heavily based on TLS 1.3. The devs essentially tweaked standard TLS but in turn that left the app with an encryption implementation, which "is inconsistent with the level of cryptography you would expect in an app used by a billion users, such as its use of deterministic IVs and lack of forward secrecy."...
6 days ago
Anonymous Sudan isn't any more: Two alleged operators named, charged
Hacktivist gang Anonymous Sudan appears to have lost its anonymity after the US Attorney's Office on Wednesday unsealed an indictment identifying two of its alleged operators. The indictment [PDF] named Sudanese nationals Ahmed Salah Yousif Omer and Alaa Salah Yusuuf Omer as members of Anonymous Sudan. An accompanying announcement accused the pair of "operating and controlling Anonymous Sudan, an online cyber criminal group responsible for tens of thousands of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against critical infrastructure, corporate networks,...
6 days ago
Elon Musk's X isn't important enough to feel the full force of EU regulation
The EU has said it won't classify Elon Musk’s X as “gatekeeper” – the bloc’s designation for the most significant digital platforms- because it doesn’t think the social network is that big a deal. Under its Digital Markets Act (DMA) the EU can designate gatekeepers when they achieve a certain annual turnover, provide a core platform service in at least three member states and serve than 45 million monthly active end users. To date, seven companies – Alphabet, Amazon, Apple,...
6 days ago
Oh, what a feeling: Toyota building robots that get better with practice
Boston Dynamics and Toyota Research Institute (TRI) announced on Wednesday they're partnering to combine the former's multi-jointed athletic humanoid, Atlas, with TRI's large behavior models (LBM). Boston Dynamics CEO Robert Playter enthused that he was looking forward to accelerating "the development of general-purpose humanoids," while TRI CEO Gill Pratt cheered that "recent advances in AI and machine learning hold tremendous potential for advancing physical intelligence." As a reminder, this is Atlas: Youtube Video TRI's LBM work includes the generative AI...
6 days ago
China launches plan to lead the world in space exploration
China yesterday revealed its space exploration plans between now and the year 2050, and one of the nation's goals is finding habitable planets beyond our solar system. The plan is the work of China's Academy of Sciences, National Space Administration, and Manned Space Engineering Office, and is the first national-level plan developed by the Middle Kingdom. The document published online offers a list of the big things China wants to investigate, namely: The "extreme universe" - investigating the origin of...
6 days ago
Wipro orders hybrid work as other tech giants make full-time pants-wearing mandatory
Indian IT outsourcer Wipro bucked recent trends this week, when it announced it would allow its employees remote work. HR head Saurabh Govil took to LinkedIn on Tuesday to share the news of the hybrid work policy. "We expect associates to work from the office premises three days a week, choosing these days based on their need to collaborate," wrote Govil. "Our approach also has the option for associates to seek remote working for specified days in a year, to...
6 days ago
Datacenter CEO faked top-tier IT reliability cert to snag $10.7M SEC deal, DoJ claims
It's one thing to stretch the truth in your marketing material, but allegedly lying about your datacenter's qualities to lure the Securities and Exchange Commission as a customer is a whole other matter. Deepak Jain, identified as the CEO of a Maryland IT services firm that goes unnamed in a grand jury indictment [PDF] made public on Wednesday, has been charged with six counts of major fraud and one count of making false statements after allegedly telling the Commission (SEC)...
6 days ago
US contractor pays $300K to settle accusation it didn't properly look after Medicare users' data
A US government contractor will settle claims it violated cyber security rules prior to a breach that compromised Medicare beneficiaries' personal data. Virginia-based ASRC Federal Data Solutions (AFDS) signed a deal with the Justice Department this week agreeing to pay $306,722 in restitution, but without admitting liability for the allegations. AFDS also agreed to waive rights to reimbursement for the money it already spent remediating the data exposure. This includes the $877,578 spent notifying victims that their data had been...
6 days ago
Intel lets go of 2,000 staff at Oregon R&D site, offices in Texas, Arizona, California
Intel this week handed out pink slips to more than 2,000 workers across the USA The latest of these job cuts saw 1,300 people let go at Intel's Hillsboro offices, a crucial research and development hub where many of the chipmaker's next-gen parts get their start. First reported by the Oregonian on Tuesday, the layoffs are part of a massive staffing reduction that Intel announced in August following a disastrous second quarter. The job cuts will see the x86 giant...
6 days ago
Critical default credential in Kubernetes Image Builder allows SSH root access
A critical bug in Kubernetes Image Builder could allow unauthorized SSH access to virtual machines (VMs) due to default credentials being enabled during the image build process. Image Builder is a tool used to build Kubernetes VMs images across multiple infrastructure providers – and images it creates include default credentials which can be used to gain root access to VMs. The vulnerability means VM images built with the Promox provider are most at risk. This flaw is tracked as CVE-2024-9486,...
6 days ago
Volkswagen monitoring data dump threat from 8Base ransomware crew
The 8Base ransomware crew claims to have stolen a huge data dump of Volkswagen files and is threatening to publish them, but the German car giant appears to be unconcerned. The extortionists, who first came to light in 2022, posted a warning on their dark web page claiming to have detailed files stolen from Volkswagen, amongst others. The group says it has stolen "a huge amount of confidential information," including: Invoices, receipts and accounting documents Personal data and files Employment...
6 days ago
Bandai Namco reportedly tries to bore staff into quitting, skirting Japan’s labor laws
The next time you feel dehumanized by rumors of surprise HR meetings popping up on calendars amidst layoff rumors, be glad you don't work at game studio Bandai Namco in Japan. Like other video game studios, Bandai Namco has been forced to confront an industry slowdown lately that many companies have reacted to by laying employees off to cut costs. That's easier said than done in Japan, where incredibly strict labor laws make it near impossible to fire all but...
6 days ago
Critical hardcoded SolarWinds credential now exploited in the wild
A critical, hardcoded credential bug in SolarWinds' Web Help Desk products has been found and exploited by criminals, according to the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which has added the flaw to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog. This 9.1 CVSS-rated flaw allows remote, unauthenticated attackers to log into vulnerable instances via these baked-in creds, and then access internal functionality and modify sensitive data. While we don't have any details about the scope of these exploits, the software maker did...
6 days ago
FTC drops hammer on unwanted subscriptions with 'click to cancel' rule
The US Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday announced a final "click-to-cancel" rule that aims to simplify the process of ending unwanted subscriptions to products and services. The "Rule Concerning Recurring Subscriptions and Other Negative Option Programs" addresses business practices that make it more difficult for consumers to cancel subscriptions. "Too often, businesses make people jump through endless hoops just to cancel a subscription," said FTC Chair Lina Khan in a statement. "The FTC’s rule will end these tricks and traps,...
6 days ago
China’s infosec leads accuse Intel of NSA backdoor, cite chip security flaws
A Chinese industry group has accused Intel of backdooring its CPUs, in addition to other questionable security practices while calling for an investigation into the chipmaker, claiming its products pose "serious risks to national security." The Cybersecurity Association of China (CSAC), in a lengthy post on its WeChat account on Wednesday described Intel's chips as being riddled with vulnerabilities, adding that the American company's "major defects in product quality and security management show its extremely irresponsible attitude towards customers." The...
6 days ago
Amazon makes $500M bet on itty-bitty nuclear reactors to fuel cloud empire
With energy scarcity threatening to derail datacenter ambitions, cloud providers are looking for salvation in the atom. On Wednesday, Amazon announced plans to support the development of three new nuclear energy projects, which it says will see the construction of several new small modular reactors (SMRs). Just as their name suggests, SMRs are miniaturized nuclear power plants designed to be mass produced in a modular fashion. Amazon touts "faster build times" and the ability to deploy them "closer to the...
6 days ago
Parents take school to court after student punished for using AI
The parents of a Massachusetts child are taking his school to court after the student was punished for using AI in a class project. The individual, named only as RNH, admitted to teachers that they had used AI when writing a Social Studies project in December, but claimed it was only for research and not to write the whole paper. The student was given a Saturday detention and marked down on the project, something his parents are now suing to...
6 days ago
Viable fusion power in a decade? Tokamak Energy dares to dream
Brit nuclear fusion biz Tokamak Energy has detailed early progress in a US Department of Energy (DOE) project that aims to deliver commercial fusion energy in the next decade. The Oxfordshire-based company gave an overview of its early design workflow for the US Fusion Development Program at the 66th Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society (APS) Division of Plasma Physics in Atlanta, Georgia, last week. This milestone-based development program was established by DOE as a competition, with the aim...
6 days ago