Iain Thomson

Google admitted Tuesday its paid-for G Suite of cloudy apps aimed at businesses stored some user passwords in plaintext albeit in an encrypted form. Administrators of accounts affected by the security blunder were warned via email that, in certain circumstances, passwords had not been hashed. Hashing is a standard industry …

The winner of a Russian talent show for children has been stripped of her crown following confirmation that software was used to swing a public vote in her favor. There was a national outcry when 11-year-old Mikella Abramova won the top telly talent show The Voice Kids with 56.5 per cent of a public poll, bagging over 30,000 …

After seven days of freedom, US Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning is back behind bars for refusing to testify before a secret federal grand jury investigating WikiLeaks. District Court Judge Anthony Trenga ordered Manning back to prison, and said she will, in addition, be fined $500 a day for the first 30 days in the clink, …

Ten people have been accused of masterminded the theft of roughly $100m from bank accounts using the Goznym malware. Five have been arrested, charged, and are facing prosecution, and five have been indicted and remain at large. An eleventh person linked to the software nasty is awaiting sentencing after admitting his crimes. …

China today signaled that it’s in no mood to roll over and play nice in the ongoing trade war with America, promising instead to "fight to the end." Last week’s decision by President Trump to further increase import tariffs on Chinese goods was followed up yesterday by a national emergency proclamation engineered to, …

The Magecart credit-card-skimming malware that is the bane of internet shoppers has been spotted again, this time on the Forbes magazine subscription website. The infection was clocked by net security watcher Troy Mursch at around 0400 UTC on Wednesday. It appears hackers unknown somehow installed malicious JavaScript on …

Patch TuesdayIt’s that time of the month again, and Microsoft has released a bumper bundle of security fixes for Patch Tuesday, including one for out-of-support operating systems Windows XP and Server 2003. Usually support for such aging operating systems costs an arm and a leg, though Redmond has released a freebie because of the serious …

UpdatedA security flaw in WhatsApp can be, and has been, exploited to inject spyware into victims' smartphones: all a snoop needs to do is make a booby-trapped voice call to a target's number, and they're in. The victim doesn't need to do a thing other than leave their phone on. The Facebook-owned software suffers from a classic …

Security weaknesses at the heart of some of Cisco's network routers, switches, and firewalls can be exploited by hackers to hide spyware deep inside compromised equipment. In order to exploit these flaws, dubbed 😾😾😾 or Thrangrycat by their discoverers, a miscreant or rogue employee needs to be able to log into the vulnerable …

RoundupWelcome back, Brits, from your three-day Bank Holiday week. Allow us to catch you up on recent infosec comings and goings. 'Hamas hackers' bombed: Israeli Defence Forces claim they destroyed a building in the Gaza Strip on Saturday said to be used by Hamas hackers. The Palestinian militants were targeted in the air strike in …

Scientists at NASA have accused one of their metal suppliers of lying about the strength of its aluminium in a 19-year scam that caused $700m in satellites and other parts to go up in smoke. The space agency eggheads pointed the finger of blame at the aluminium manufacturer after probing two failed science missions: the …

Back in March, remote desktop specialist Citrix admitted hackers had romped through its core systems, and had purloined internal business documents. Now we're finding out the intrusion was much worse than first thought. A letter [PDF] to the California Attorney General this week, required by law following a hack of this nature …

Right on cue, Cisco on Wednesday patched a security vulnerability in some of its network switches that can be exploited by miscreants to commandeer the IT equipment and spy on people. This comes immediately after panic this week over a hidden Telnet-based diagnostic interface was found in Huawei gateways. Although that …

IT admins overseeing Oracle's WebLogic Server installations need to get patching immediately: miscreants are exploiting what was a zero-day vulnerability in the software to pump ransomware into networks. The Cisco Talos security team said one its customers discovered it had been infected via the bug on April 25, though the …

RoundupHere's your quick-fire summary of recent computer security news. Docker: Someone broke into a database holding Docker Hub account information, and managed to siphon off non-financial records on 190,000 users before the exfiltration was, presumably, detected and stopped. The intrusion happened on Thursday, April 25, though …

Intel's CEO Bob Swan told Wall St on Thursday he had "the best job in the world," though it can't have felt like it as he announced his first full quarter's financial figures as the official head honcho. The chip-slinger has been hit by a triple whammy of woe, he explained. Demand for Intel hardware in China has been much …

The NSA's mass-logging of people's phone calls and text messages, at home and abroad – a surveillance program introduced after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks – is set to end as it's no longer worth the hassle. The blanket spying, which hoovered up the metadata for all calls and texts made by US citizens as well as …

Facebook's financial figures for its first quarter of 2019, published Wednesday, had an interesting twist. The Mark Zuckerberg-run biz set aside $3bn of its profits, effectively halving its net income, to foot an expected fine from America's trade watchdog for seemingly running roughshod over people's privacy. The size of the …

UpdatedUnlucky Sophos antivirus users face a dilemma: either uninstall the software, or install April's Windows security fixes. That's because having both in place at the same time will bork their machines. On April 9, Microsoft rolled out its usual Patch Tuesday vulnerability patches for the month. Unfortunately, Sophos customers …

For anyone upset about the fate of doomed art application Microsoft Paint, bundled with Windows for as long as we can remember, here's something to set your mind at easel. The software has been given a reprieve, and will be included in the upcoming Windows 10 1903 release, aka the May 2019 upgrade due to officially roll out …

RoundupWelcome back, Brits, from your Easter break – assuming you weren't working or on-call over the four-day weekend. Since you've been away from your desks, RSS feeds, and browsers, it's been a busy time in cyber-security, what with not one but two Facebook privacy cockups, one cunningly timed to coincide with the release of the …

Water coolerHey El Reg, help me out with this. I saw someone on Twitter complaining that she had to have her face scanned by US airline JetBlue before flying overseas from America. Why would they be doing this? According to food writer MacKenzie Fegan, she was asked to undergo a facial scan at a computer terminal at the departure gate …

Samsung has confirmed that its dual-screen Galaxy Fold handset, which was due to go on sale for $1,980 apiece this week in the US, has been delayed due to the touchscreen easily breaking. Early builds of the fold-able Fold were given out to selected journalists to review and praise earlier this month, though, within days of …

Marcus Hutchins, the British security researcher who shot to fame after successfully halting the Wannacry ransomware epidemic, has pleaded guilty to crafting online bank-account-raiding malware. For nearly two years now, Hutchins, 24, has been living in the US, while out on bail awaiting trial, after being collared in 2017 at …

Android users across Europe are due a software update from Google today that will ask them to make a choice for the future of their smartphones and gadgets – which browser and search engine do you want to use? Once the update has been installed, the next visit to the Google Play Store will throw up two panels, asking users to …