Iain Thomson

DEF CON Hackers of all ages have been investigating America’s voting machine tech, and the results weren't great. For instance, one 11-year-old apparently managed to hack and alter a simulated Secretary of State election results webpage in 10 minutes. The Vote Hacking Village, one of the most packed-out locations at this year’s DEF …

DEF CON American police and the judiciary are increasingly relying on software to catch, prosecute and sentence criminal suspects, but the code is untested, unavailable to suspects' defense teams, and in some cases provably biased. In a presentation at the DEF CON hacking conference in Las Vegas, delegates were given the example of …

DEF CON Rob Joyce, the former head of the NSA’s Tailored Access Operations hacking team, has spilled the beans on which nations are getting up to mischief online. Joyce gave one of the first talks at the DEF CON hacking conference in Las Vegas and interest was intense - the lines to get in stretched around the hall. Joyce …

Updated At midnight on Thursday, Matt Linton, a senior Google bod who was one of the key players in sorting out the Spectre CPU security hole mess, went to his hotel room in Caesars Palace, Las Vegas – and found his key no longer worked. When he went to reception to find out what the problem was, he was met by two security guards who …

Black Hat Four years ago, IOActive security researcher Ruben Santamarta came to Black Hat USA to warn about insecurities in aircraft satellite-communication (SATCOM) systems. Now he’s back with more doom and gloom. During a presentation at this year's hacking conference in Las Vegas this week, he claimed he has found a host of flaws in …

Black Hat The whizz kids who uncovered the Spectre and Meltdown data-leaking flaws in modern processors have scooped two Pwnie Awards – often referred to as the information security industry’s Oscars. Moritz Lipp, Michael Schwarz, Daniel Gruss, Thomas Prescher, Werner Haas, Stefan Mangard, Paul Kocher, Daniel Genkin, Yuval Yarom, Mike …

Black Hat Data centers are vital in this cloudy world – yet little-understood management chips potentially give hackers easy access to their servers in ways sysadmins may not have imagined. The components in question are known as baseband management controllers (BMCs). They are discrete microcontrollers popped into boxes by the likes of …

Black Hat Car hacking wizards Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek have turned their attention to autonomous vehicles – and reckon the security is surprisingly good. The duo, who work for General Motors’ robo-automaker offshoot Cruise, told this year's Black Hat USA conference on Thursday while self-driving vehicles are much less hackable …

Black Hat Next time you leave things to the last minute, remember this well. Despite having known about the Meltdown and Spectre security vulnerabilities for roughly six months, Intel and other chip giants still hadn't warned the US government's cybersecurity nerve-center by the time The Register blew the lid off the design flaws. …

Black Hat Not that many moons ago, Microsoft was seemingly reluctant to open a bug bounty program. It also once described Linux as a cancer. Now it claims to love Linux, and is offering bounties on bugs. How times change. On Wednesday, Redmond not only reiterated its offer of oodles of cash in exchange for details of exploitable …

Black Hat In a personal and powerful presentation, a computer security veteran has warned that too many infosec bods are fighting a losing battle with the bottle. Jamie Tomasello, senior manager of security operations at Duo Security, has 17 years of experience in the industry, and has been sober for the past six. While the causes of …

Black Hat Parisa Tabriz, a director of engineering at Google and head of the web giant's Project Zero bug-hunting squad, today opened this year's Black Hat USA conference with a reminder that partying is key to securing software. There’s more to it than that, of course: clear goals and targets have to be set, management and staff have …

Black Hat IBM has promised to open four research centers that will hunt for security vulnerabilities in technology – including a team dedicated to probing cash machines for flaws. It has been eight years since the late, great hacker Barnaby Jack took to the stage at the Black Hat USA conference in Las Vegas, and showed attendees how in …

Black Hat While ransomware continues to extort factories, hospitals, schools, businesses, and ordinary netizens, BlackBerry reckons it can quickly rescue peeps from malware infections. The Canadian biz's days as the smartphone king long gone, with Apple making quick work of its hardware. And although it still licenses its name to a few …

About a quarter of a century ago, a handful of hackers decided to have a party in a cheap hotel, and had a whale of a time. Fast forward to 2018, and that get-together has grown into events that will see an estimated 30,000 people converge on Las Vegas for the biggest security shindig in the world – the combination of Black …

DEF CON The organizers of the DEF CON hacking conference, due to be held in Las Vegas, USA, next week, have put those who intend to spoil the event on warning: such tactics will not be tolerated. At last month's Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) event in New York City, several sessions were wrecked by white nationalist attendees spouting …

DEF CON Last year, the hackers at DEF CON showed how shockingly easy it was to crack into voting machine software and hardware. Next week, the 2018 conference's Vote Hacking Village will let kids have a shot at subverting democracy. Beginning on Friday, August 10, teams in three age ranges, 8-11, 12-14 and 15-16, will be let loose on …

In a Wednesday mea culpa, Reddit – the online chat board that got a little out of hand and became the sixth most-visited website on the internet – has admitted it was raided by hackers unknown. For four days, specifically June 14 to June 18, miscreants managed to break into the website's cloud hosting and source-code …

Apple continues to display all the characteristics of a money-making machine, with record results for the third quarter of the year. This was the iGiant's strongest fiscal third-quarter results in its history, according to Apple, and its fourth straight quarter of double-digit revenue growth. In a conference call with analysts …

The US military is drawing up a list of overseas organizations – primarily in Russia and China, funnily enough – that the Pentagon and its contractors shouldn't buy software from, citing security concerns. In a briefing with journalists on Friday, Ellen Lord, US defense undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment, said …

Roundup There has been a bumper crop of security news this week, including another shipping giant getting taken down by ransomware, Russian hackers apparently completely pwning US power grids and a sane request from Senator Wyden (D-OR) for the US government to dump Flash. But there has been other news bubbling under. Useless action …

Despite record-breaking earnings, Intel's shares took a modest dip on Thursday when the semiconductor behemoth reveal its financial results for the second quarter of this year. Revenues for the three months to June 30 rose strongly, year on year, and profits were up 78 per cent. However, it's clear that the markets are …

It's day two of Google's Cloud Next 2018 conference in San Francisco – and the Chocolate Factory has been unveiling its defenses to thwart hackers and malware. Top of the list is the Titan two-factor authentication widgets Google is going to start shipping later in the year, consisting of a pair of USB and Bluetooth key fobs. …

Amazon's 36-hour "Prime Day" marketing jamboree has kicked off with more than a few hiccups. Almost as soon as it started, Amazon customers eager to indulge in an orgy of consumption found their purchasing plans paralyzed – because Amazon's servers refused to accept payment details. Wannabe buyers grew increasingly frustrated …

Updated Register readers, and quite a few other people, have been left with dead credit cards after Mastercard's payment system took a dive on Thursday. "Mastercard went down this evening," one Reg reader, based in Britain, told us privately. "Couldn’t pay for petrol. It’s a disgrace you can’t trust cards to pay when you need them to …