Publicly exposed PostgreSQL and MySQL databases with weak passwords are being autonomously wiped out by a malicious extortion bot – one that marks who pays up and who is not getting their data back.…

Gartner thinks the ever-expanding GenAI ecosystem is being hyped with real customer deployments not emerging in earnest until next year.…

Analysis  Tackling AI disinformation is more crucial than ever for tech companies this year as they brace for the upcoming US presidential election.…

Post Office chief exec Nick Read left British politicians shocked with his evidence before a Parliamentary committee yesterday after he admitted he could not say when the public body at the center of the historic miscarriage of justice knew when its system was at fault.…

Microsoft's desperation to persuade customers that migrating to Windows 11 is a painless process has taken a new turn, thanks to a relentlessly perky video: "Make Your Move to Windows 11 Easier."…

The latest Windows Server 2022 patch has broken the Chrome browser, and short of uninstalling the update, a registry hack is the only way to restore service for affected users.…

Retro Tech Week  Forty years ago, both Jerome and Marilyn Murray saw their brainchild reach the light of day. In 1984, their book, Computers in Crisis, was published, becoming the first authoritative guide to the Millennium Bug coding problem, which, in the final year of the century, would consume media, political and business attention.…

Updated  BT is ditching mid-contract price hikes linked to inflation before Britain's comms regulator issues a blanket ban in pursuit of greater transparency for customers.…

Another week and yet another couple of pesky cold callers face fines from the UK's data privacy watchdog for "bombarding" unsuspecting households with marketing messages about home improvements.…

Google claims users of popular ad-blocking extensions have wrongly blamed YouTube for slow video streaming speeds – and that the content filters themselves are the reason for stuttering playback.…

Kettle  It's Retro Tech Week here at The Register, and we've got four of our vultures together to talk about old computers and software that, in one form or another, thankfully refuses to die.…

Scammers are buying up cheap domain names to host sites that sell dodgy health products using fake articles, according to cybercrime disruption outfit Netcraft.…

Google has altered the text describing data collection when users employ Incognito Mode in its Chrome browser.…

Indian forestry authorities have laid traps for a leopard that was spotted prowling near campuses used by tech services giants Infosys and TCS.…

Comment  A vendor establishing a business unit dedicated to government sales is not new or unusual. But Finnish telecommunications giant Nokia’s decision to do so in the USA this week tells a bigger story about Washington’s paranoia regarding the security of critical communications infrastructure security.…

Crooks are exploiting years-old vulnerabilities to deploy Androxgh0st malware and build a cloud-credential stealing botnet, according to the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).…

Retro Tech Week  The world-beating video game scores of self-styled arcade legend Billy Mitchell have been reinstated following a settlement with record-keeping org Twin Galaxies, which had wiped his achievements in 2018 following allegations of cheating.…

OpenAI is developing AI-powered cybersecurity capabilities for the US military, and shifting its election security work into high gear, the lab's execs told the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos this week.…

Analysis  AI biz Anthropic has published research showing that large language models (LLMs) can be subverted in a way that safety training doesn't currently address.…

An AI chatbot was better at diagnosing medical ailments and communicating results than human physicians in text-based conversations, a research paper from Google claims.…