Digital freedom needs a Kali Linux for the rest of us Opinion The hacker mind is a curious way to be. To have it means to embody endless analytical curiosity, an awareness of any given rule set as just one system among many, and an ability to see any …
The only good password is no password at all opinion Passwords turn 65 this year. They became a feature of computer users' lives in 1961, with MIT's Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS). Before then, sysops were real sysops. All jobs went through them, one at a time, and access by …
Don't be scared of the digital dark – learn how to keep the lights on Opinion Barely a month into 2026, electrical power infrastructure on two continents has tested positive for cyberattacks. One fell flat as attempts to infiltrate and disrupt the Polish distribution grid were rebuffed and reported. The …
I'm dreaming of a white hat mass Opinion It was 40 years ago that four young British hackers set about changing the law, although they didn't know it at the time. It was a cross-platform attack including a ZX Spectrum, a BBC Micro, and a Tatung Einstein slamming British …
We’re blind to malicious AI until it hits. We can still open our eyes to stopping it Opinion Last year, The Register reported on AI sleeper agents. A major academic study explored how to train an LLM to hide destructive behavior from its users, and how to find …
Don't worry, there's a twist at the end Opinion Agatha Christie stuck a dagger in the notion that crime doesn't pay. With sales of between two and four billion books – fittingly, the exact number is a mystery – she built a career out of murder that out-bloodied Jack the Ripper …
If it’s not on-prem, it’s on the menu Opinion The details of cloud data regionalization are rarely the stuff of great drama. When they’ve reached the level of an exec admitting to the Senate that a foreign power can help itself to that nation's data, no …
The modern art form that redeemed a Windows utility has lessons for all Opinion The speedrun is one of the internet's genuinely new artforms. At its best, it's akin to a virtuoso piano recital. Less emotional depth, more adrenalin. Watching an expert fly through a game creates an endorphin …
Like being hard to spot? They’d much rather you didn’t Opinion There are few tech deceptions more successful than Chrome's Incognito Mode.... [...]
Big tech can't be bothered to fight crime. It can barely be bothered even to say so Opinion A lot of our tech world is nightmarish, but sometimes this is literally true.... [...]
We need to make taking IT systems 'off the books' a problem for corporate types Opinion It's been a devastating few weeks for UK retail giants. Marks and Spencer, the Co-Op, and now uber-posh Harrods have had massive disruptions due to ransomware attacks taking systems down for prolonged periods …
UK holds onto oversight by a whisker, but it's utterly barefaced on the other side of the pond Opinion The UK government's attempts to worm into Apple's core end-to-end encryption were set back last week when the country's Home Office failed in its bid to keep them secret on …
Throw a spanner in the works, best get good at fixing things. Now, where did you put that spanner? Opinion Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. This works well in sane times, less so when "but it's both" is the default. Apply it to …
Cut off one head and 100 grow back? Decapitation may not be the way to go Opinion With Apple pulling the plug on at-rest end-to-end encryption (E2EE) for UK users, and Signal threatening to pull out of Sweden if that government demands E2EE backdoors, it's looking bleak.... [...]
Lions juggling chainsaws are fun to watch, but you wouldn't want them trimming your trees Opinion Nobody likes The Man. When a traffic cop tells you to straighten up and slow down or else, profound thanks are rarely the first words on your lips. Then you drive past a …
Clear rules and guaranteed consequences concentrate the mind wonderfully. Just ask a Russian Opinion "As obsolete as warships in the Baltic" was a great pop lyric in Prefab Sprout's 1985 gem, Faron Young. Great, but ironically obsolete itself. Sweden has just deployed multiple warships in that selfsame sea to …
If 40 years of faulty building gets blown down, don’t rebuild with the rubble Opinion When a typhoon devastates a land, it takes a while to understand the scale of the destruction. Disaster relief kicks in, communications rebuilt, and news flows out. Salt Typhoon is no different.... [...]
2024's Tech Fail Roll Of Dishonor Opinion Happy new year! Tradition says that this is when we boldly look forward to what may happen in the 12 months to come. Do you really want to know that? Didn’t think so.... [...]