TheRegister
Europe's GDPR cops dished out €1.2B in fines last year as data breaches piled up
GDPR fines pushed past the £1 billion (€1.2 billion) mark in 2025 as Europe's regulators were deluged with more than 400 data breach notifications a day, according to a new survey that suggests the post-plateau era of enforcement has well and truly arrived.…
Bank of England: Financial sector failing to implement basic cybersecurity controls
Concerned about the orgs that safeguard your money? The UK's annual cybersecurity review for 2025 suggests you should be. Despite years of regulation, financial organizations continue to miss basic cybersecurity safeguards.…
Ancient telnet bug happily hands out root to attackers
A recently disclosed critical vulnerability in the GNU InetUtils telnet daemon (telnetd) is "trivial" to exploit, experts say.…
House of Lords votes to ban social media for Brits under 16
UK government is edging closer to following Australia in blocking under-16s from social media accounts after the House of Lords voted in favor of a ban.…
Turing Institute Chief Scientist takes acting CEO role amid defense push
The Alan Turing Institute's Chief Scientist has temporarily stepped into the hot seat at the UK's flagship AI research organization after the long-flagged departure of CEO Jean Innes.…
Rocket Lab's Neutron schedule under pressure after unexpected tank rupture
Rocket Lab suffered a setback after a Neutron Stage 1 tank ruptured overnight while the company was performing a hydrostatic pressure trial at its Space Structures Complex in Middle River, Maryland.…
Another week, another emergency patch as Cisco plugs Unified Comms zero-day
Cisco has finally shipped a fix for a critical-rated zero-day in its Unified Communications gear, a flaw that's already being weaponized in the wild, and which CISA previously flagged as an emergency priority.…
Debian's FreedomBox Blend promises an easier home cloud
Hands On Want to get off someone else's cloud, especially if it's hosted in a country you don't trust? FreedomBox is an off-ramp, and it's included in Debian in the form of a Blend.…
SAP scores £275M award from UK tax collector – sans competition
The UK tax collector has awarded SAP a £275 million ($370 million) contract to move the system, which handles over £800 billion (c $1 trillion) in tax revenue and payments annually, off an aging legacy platform and onto its latest software.…
British Army's drone degree program set to take flight
The UK government is investing in a defense-focused degree course to train both civilian students and soldiers to become drone technology specialists. However, it's only targeting a small number of people.…
Splash-screen memories from a Bangkok ticket machine
Bork!Bork!Bork! There's no keeping an obsolete operating system down, although keeping it operational can sometimes be a challenge, if public terminals are any indication. Today's bork uses an OS that dates back 26 years, but is still serving up train tickets.…
Anthropic writes Constitution for Claude it thinks will soon be proven ‘misguided’
The Constitution of the United States of America is about 7,500 words long, a factoid The Register mentions because on Wednesday AI company Anthropic delivered an updated 23,000-word constitution for its Claude family of AI models.…
eBay updates legalese to ban AI-powered shop-bots
eBay has decided to ban agentic shopping bots from its digital tat bazaar.…
Future jobs in AI will come with a hardhat and boots, tech bigshots argue
The leaders of the AI world descended on Davos, Switzerland, this week for the World Economic Forum, where they took turns lobbing their best guesses about what the next phase of AI would mean for jobs, as well as whether the AI bubble was real and when it may pop.…
AI networking startup Upscale scores $200M to challenge Nvidia's NVSwitch
AI networking startup Upscale AI on Wednesday announced it has raised $200 million in Series A funding to challenge Nvidia's dominance of switches for rack-scale AI systems, putting it in competition with the likes of Cisco and AMD.…
Davos discussion mulls how to keep AI agents from running wild
AI agents arrived in Davos this week with the question of how to secure them - and prevent agents from becoming the ultimate insider threat - taking center stage during a panel discussion on cyber threats.…
AI hasn't delivered the profits it was hyped for, says Deloitte
Making money isn't everything ... at least not when it comes to AI. Research from professional services firm Deloitte shows that, for most companies, adopting AI tools hasn't helped the bottom line at all. But researchers still sing the technology's praises.…
MIT boffins create device that 'paints' iridescent structural color in real time
The feathers of a hummingbird, the wings of a butterfly, and the sparkle of an opal are all examples of nature's ability to produce structural, iridescent colors that typically require lab-grade materials and techniques to replicate. An MIT team says it has found a way to make that process far more accessible.…
House GOP wants final say on AI chip exports after Trump gives Nvidia a China hall pass
President Trump's decision to green-light the sale of Nvidia H200 GPUs to China isn't sitting well with some of his Republican colleagues in the House of Representatives. These GOP politicians have proposed a bill that would give Congress final say over the export of AI chips to China and other countries of concern.…
Don't click on the LastPass 'create backup' link - it's a scam
Password managers make great targets for attackers because they can hold many of the keys to your kingdom. Now, LastPass has warned customers about phishing emails claiming that action is required ahead of scheduled maintenance and told them not to fall for the scam. …