The Register

The latest in a long line of techies to face Putin’s wrath

A Russian programmer will face the next 14 years in a "strict-regime" (high-security) penal colony after a regional court ruled he leaked sensitive data to Ukraine.…

Poor password management is responsible for thousands of data breaches, but it doesn’t have to be this way.

Sponsored feature  The IT business likes to reinvent things as quickly as possible. Except passwords, that is. We've been using them since Roman times, only now they're digital. They're the fungal skin disease of tech; irritating and hard to get rid of.…

SimpleHelp was the vector for the attack

DragonForce ransomware infected a managed service provider, and its customers, after attackers exploited security flaws in remote monitoring and management tool SimpleHelp.…

Really strong USB ports make a difference too by reducing the need for motherboard replacements

Computex  Analysts rate Taiwan’s ASUS the world’s fifth most prolific PC-maker, but the company wants to climb the charts by targeting business buyers, according to Shawn Chang, Head of Go-To-Market for the outfit’s Commercial Business Unit.…

Millions may fall for it - and end up with malware instead

A group of miscreants tracked as UNC6032 is exploiting interest in AI video generators by planting malicious ads on social media platforms to steal credentials, credit card details, and other sensitive info, according to Mandiant.…

Dutch intel services, Microsoft go big-game hunting

A previously unknown Kremlin-linked group has conducted cyber-espionage operations against Dutch police, NATO member states, Western tech companies, and other organizations of interest to the Russian government since at least April 2024, according to Dutch intelligence services and Microsoft.…

Hackers take personal data bytes from the brand with three stripes

Adidas is warning customers some of their data was stolen after an "unauthorized" person lifted it from a "third-party customer service provider."…

Commercial customers, STEM students all feeling the pain after mega outage of engineering data-analysis tool

Software biz MathWorks is cleaning up a ransomware attack more than a week after it took down MATLAB, its flagship product used by more than five million people worldwide.…

PLUS: Interpol kills more malware; GoDaddy settles in awful infosec case; Giant stolen creds DB exposed

Infosec In Brief  Secrets of the Trump administration may have been exposed after a successful attack on messaging service TeleMessage, which has been used by some officials.…

PLUS: Original emoji retired; Xiaomi's custom silicon; MediaTek goes to 2nm

Asia In Brief  China last week approved rules that will see Beijing issue identity numbers that netizens can use as part of a federated identity scheme that will mean they can use one logon across multiple online services.…

Michael Daniel also thinks Uncle Sam should increase help to orgs hit by ransomware

INTERVIEW  Uncle Sam's cybersecurity apparatus can't only focus on China and other nation-state actors, but also has to fight the much bigger damage from plain old cybercrime, says former White House advisor Michael Daniel. And the Trump administration's steep cuts to federal government staff are making that a lot harder.…

The original leak site that never sold out, never surrendered

Obituary  John Young, the co-founder of the legendary internet archive Cryptome, died at the age of 89 on March 28. The Register talked to friends and peers who gave tribute to a bright, pugnacious man who was devoted to the public's right to know.…

Bank accounts, personal details all hoovered up in the attack

Nova Scotia Power on Friday confirmed it had been hit by a ransomware attack that began earlier this spring and disrupted certain IT systems, and admitted the crooks leaked data belonging to about 280,000 customers online. The stolen info may have included billing details and, for those on autopay, bank account numbers.…

Cyberbaddies are coming for your M365 creds, US infosec agency warns

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is warning that SaaS companies are under fire from criminals on the prowl for cloud apps with weak security.…

Callous fraudster tricked elderly gents into smuggling meth hidden in chocolate truffles

A ruthless cyber conman who duped elderly pensioners – including an 80-year-old man – into smuggling deadly class A drugs was this week locked up.…

And the associated fraud'n'spy botnet is about to be shut down

The US Department of Justice has unsealed indictments against 16 people accused of spreading and using the DanaBot remote-control malware that infected more than 300,000 computers, plus operating a botnet of the same name, and appears set to shutter its operations.…

If it ain't broke?

A suspected Chinese government spy group is behind the rash of attacks that exploit two Ivanti bugs that can be chained together to achieve unauthenticated remote code execution (RCE), according to analysts at threat intelligence outfit EclecticIQ.…

Blackmailed teen allegedly scared into carving his handle onto her arm

The FBI has filed an affidavit detailing how it identified a US Navy man who was allegedly distributing child sex abuse material (CSAM) through Discord.…

Improving security on a budget with continuous monitoring

Partner content  Most security teams face a staggering challenge. They're tasked with protecting themselves against the same advanced threats as any large enterprise, but often have a fraction of the budget, tools, and personnel. It's not uncommon to hear these teams being told to "do more with less." But still, the stakes couldn't be higher.…

Agents thought they shut this all down in 2023, but the duck quacked again

Uncle Sam on Thursday unsealed criminal charges and a civil forfeiture case against a Russian national accused of leading the cybercrime ring behind Qakbot, the notorious malware that infected hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide and helped fuel ransomware attacks costing victims tens of millions of dollars.…