The Register

Act passed in 2015 is due to lapse unless a continuing resolution passes - and that's unlikely

Barring a last-minute deal, the US federal government would shut down on Wednesday, October 1, and the 2015 Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act would lapse at the same time, threatening what many consider a critical plank of US cybersecurity policy.…

Consultancy says machine learning advice is making bank

ai-pocalypse  AI is proving to be a gold mine for mega tech consultancy Accenture, but if staff can't use it, then it's time to pack up their desks.…

Oversight efforts have been rebuffed, says Democratic report, 'putting Americans' personal data at risk'

A trio of federal executive agencies targeted by DOGE cost-cutters either don't know or won't say what the group is doing inside their operations, according to a Senate investigation that concludes DOGE is acting without legal authority or oversight.…

Aptly named spacecraft might never make it to the orbital outpost after all

NASA and Sierra Space have modified the Commercial Resupply Services-2 contract, which originally called for the Dream Chaser spaceplane to be used to supply the International Space Station (ISS).…

Study finds microgrids with wind, solar, and batteries can be built years sooner and at lower cost than SMRs

Renewable energy sources could power datacenters at a lower cost than relying on nuclear generation from small modular reactors (SMRs), claims a recently revealed study.…

Upgraded nasty slips into Xcode builds, steals crypto, and disables macOS defenses

The long-running XCSSET malware strain has evolved again, with Microsoft warning of a new macOS variant that expands its bag of tricks while continuing to target developers.…

Move comes as Snowflake and Databricks chase the same all-in-one analytics dream

Google is promising a single notebook environment for machine learning and data analytics, integrating SQL, Python, and Apache Spark in one place.…

Researchers say tens of thousands of instances remain publicly reachable

Security researchers have confirmed that threat actors have exploited the maximum-severity vulnerability affecting Fortra's GoAnywhere managed file transfer (MFT), and chastised the vendor for a lack of transparency.…

Operation Cronos didn’t kill LockBit – it just came back meaner

Trend Micro has sounded the alarm over the new LockBit 5.0 ransomware strain, which it warns is "significantly more dangerous" than past versions due to its newfound ability to simultaneously target Windows, Linux, and VMware ESXi environments. …

As exorcist convention decries AI's potential for 'necromancy'

The CEO of a software testing company told a panel at Catholic University of America that AI will not create mass unemployment – though it could make people more stupid.…

More fun with AI agents and their security holes

A now-fixed flaw in Salesforce’s Agentforce could have allowed external attackers to steal sensitive customer data via prompt injection, according to security researchers who published a proof-of-concept attack on Thursday. They were aided by an expired trusted domain that they were able to buy for a measly five bucks.…

The downstream consequences of Miljödata’s ransomware attack continue to affect major organizations

Volvo North America is the latest large organization to announce attackers accessed employee data after a ransomware attack struck its HR system provider.…

Meanwhile, Katalyst wins $30M contract to stop Swift telescope falling out of the sky

NASA has made progress with plans to boost the rapidly decaying orbit of the Swift observatory while calling an abrupt halt to an attempt to reboost the International Space Station (ISS) using SpaceX's Dragon.…

Debuted in 2007, an old feature is coming back

hands on  If you're tired of staring at the same old static wallpapers in Windows 11, there's help on the way. Microsoft has just added support for animated video backgrounds in the latest Insider builds of its popular operating system, heralding their likely appearance in a production update soon.…

CISA gives feds 24 hours to patch, NCSC urges rapid action as flaws linked to ArcaneDoor spies

Cybersecurity agencies on both sides of the Atlantic are sounding the alarm over Cisco firewall vulnerabilities that are being exploited by an "advanced threat actor."…

Prime Minister Starmer revives controversial scheme despite past denials, sparking civil liberties backlash

The UK government plans to issue all legal residents a digital identity by the end of the current Parliament, which could run until August 2029, with its use required to get a job.…

It’s amazing the number of calls Jo, Helen, and Ian get through

The UK's data protection watchdog fined two Brit businesses with offshore call centers £550,000 (c $735,000) over illegal automated marketing calls.…

They would say that, wouldn’t they?

Apple and Google have both urged the European Union to revisit its Digital Markets Act (DMA), which both tech giants say is failing.…

Companies must realize they can be more than pure consumers, and public sector ought to go beyond 'promotion'

Feature  It is 2025. Linux will turn 34 and the Free Software Foundation (FSF) 40. For the EU and Europe at large, which is famously experimental with government deployments of open source tech, behind initiatives to promote open licensing, and whose governments promote equal opportunity for FOSS vendors in public tendering, it's a crunch point.…

Manager's quality control priorities were upside down

On Call  Welcome again to On Call, The Register's weekly column in which readers share stories of earnestly trying to fix broken tech, and end up feeling broken afterwards.…