Bootnotes

Most Read

1. Won't somebody please think of the children!!! UK to mount fresh assault on end-to-end encryption in Facebook

2. Foxconn and Wisconsin reach new deal to do something different at Donald Trump's favourite (flop of a) factory

3. On a dusty red planet almost 290 million km away... NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter flies

4. Huawei could have snooped on the Dutch prime minister's phone calls thanks to KPN network core access

5. God bless this mess: Study says UK's Christian beliefs had 'important' role in Brexit

• Anyone for Palantir? UK.gov names gaggle of vendors to fight for contracts in £1.2bn back office application framework

  It's time to crack open the public sector pork barrel.... like it was ever closes
  Lindsay Clark Wed 21 Apr 2021 // 09:30 UTC

  It's pork barrel cracking time again, like it was ever really closed - the UK government has waved in a 30-strong gang of vendors to compete for slices of a potential £1.2bn framework for back office software.

  Cross-government procurement organisation, the Crown Commercial Service, said the deal will be used in central government and elsewhere in the public sector including local authorities, health, police, fire and rescue, education and devolved administrations.

  A contract award notice said the agreement would offer a route for public sector organisations to “purchase software subscriptions and licence support for back office systems direct from the software vendor.”

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• Lego's Space Shuttle Discovery: No trouble with Hubble, but the stickers will drive a grown man to insanity

  The Reg once again shoves its talons into bags of spiky bricks for latest website-breaking set
  Richard Speed Wed 21 Apr 2021 // 08:31 UTC

  Despite scratched silver blocks and a woeful VIP programme, The Register has built Lego's new Space Shuttle Discovery - and we never want to see another silver sticker again.

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• REvil ransomware gang claims it stole top-secret tech designs – including Apple lappies – from Quanta Computer

  Threatens to release designs and data if not paid. But dangles 2005-vintage ThinkPad as proof it's serious
  Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor Wed 21 Apr 2021 // 07:57 UTC

  An entity claiming to represent ransomware gang REvil says it has accessed "large quantities of confidential drawings and gigabytes of personal data" from Quanta Computer Incorporated, a Taiwanese manufacturer that builds laptops and other gadgets for the likes of Apple, Dell, HPE, Lenovo, Cisco, and plenty of other top-tier tech companies.

  REvil said it is "negotiating the sale" of the trove "with several major brands" and is sitting on data describing Apple's Watch, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro, plus the Lenovo ThinkPad Z60m.

  The post announcing the alleged crack includes technical drawings of a laptop that bear Apple's logo.

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• Toshiba rejects private equity buyout offer on grounds it was scarcely credible

  Tells CVC and other would-be buyers to get serious and read Japanese regulations, or go home
  Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor Wed 21 Apr 2021 // 06:58 UTC

  Japanese megacorp Toshiba has rebuffed an acquisition attempt by private equity outfit CVC.

  A notice [PDF] for shareholders said the buyout offer "was not, objectively viewed, a bona-fide and feasible acquisition proposal" under Japanese regulations and that Toshiba therefore sent CVC a "please explain" letter to seek more information.

  Toshiba says CVC's reply "contained no specific and detailed information capable of detailed evaluation." So Toshiba didn't evaluate it and dismissed CVC's criticism that "our shareholder structure has adversely affected our corporate value."

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• Not saying you should but we're told it's possible to land serverless app a '$40k/month bill using a 1,000-node botnet'

  CompSci trio describe theoretical Denial-of-Wallet attack
  Thomas Claburn in San Francisco Wed 21 Apr 2021 // 06:23 UTC

  If you want to stick it to a startup that relies on serverless infrastructure, you may be able to inflict $40,000 in financial damage every month with a modest 1,000-node botnet.

  That estimate comes from computer-science boffins Daniel Kelly, Frank Glavin, and Enda Barrett at National University of Ireland, Galway, in their recent paper, "Denial of Wallet – Defining a Looming Threat to Serverless Computing."

  Denial of Wallet, or DoW, attacks aren't actually a widely recognized threat – as the authors observe, "No DoW attacks have been publicly recorded." But they have been reported as a consequence of deploying subpar code and concern about the possibility has been bandied about for the past few years.

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• China has a satellite with an arm – and America worries it could be used to snatch other spacecraft

  Send more money to help us protect our space toys, military tells Congress
  Laura Dobberstein Wed 21 Apr 2021 // 05:58 UTC

  US military leaders have claimed China has a satellite with a grappling arm, and said its existence highlights the needs for increased funding to match the Middle Kingdom and Russia's expanding orbital arsenals.

  In the hearing, US Space Command commander General James Dickinson outlined the current state of affairs as follows:

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• Microsoft revokes MVP status of developer who tweeted complaint about request to promote SQL-on-Azure

  Programme members were asked to make noise ahead of Amazon Web Services conference
  Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor Wed 21 Apr 2021 // 04:46 UTC

  Microsoft has revoked the Most Valuable Professional status of an Australian developer who publicly complained that the programme was effectively asking members to spread marketing material.

  The software programmer, Geoffrey Huntley, took exception to Microsoft’s efforts last week in the following tweet.

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• Japan accuses Chinese military of cyber-attacks on its space agency

  200 other companies also targeted, but no data lost
  Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor Wed 21 Apr 2021 // 03:30 UTC

  Japan has accused a member of the Chinese Communist Party of conducting cyber-attacks on its space agency and 200 other local entities.

  Tokyo’s Metropolitan Police yesterday said they’ve filed a case against a Chinese national who they said works for a state-owned telco and, while living in Japan, rented servers to attack the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) in 2016. The individual, and another Chinese national believed to have visited Japan as an exchange student, are thought to have conducted up to 200 more attacks on Japanese companies over the following two years.

  Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato restated those claims in his Tuesday afternoon press briefing, and said the alleged attacker worked for Unit 61419 of China’s People’s Liberation Army, an outfit sometimes referred to as “Tick” and suspected of focusing on offensive cyber-ops.

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• Chinese officials declare intention to become network superpower, tout glorious 5G rollout that's smaller than local carriers' claims

  Great Leap Forward sees broadband speeds surge, 99 per cent of villages hooked up, all for $6/month
  Laura Dobberstein Wed 21 Apr 2021 // 02:17 UTC

  China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology had a busy Monday as it declared the country's intention to be both a manufacturing and a network superpower, and claimed progress towards the latter goal is illustrated with some seemingly odd statistics.

  Liu Liehong, Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, told reporters that China's 13th Five-Year Plan, enacted in 2015, delivered a great leap forward in networking capabilities.

  The minister claimed the Middle Kingdom has already "built the world's largest information and communication network." Under the last plan, Liehong stated that China's fibre-optic broadband users increased from 56 per cent of connections to 94 per cent since 2015, while gigabit capable passive optical networks now cover more than 120 million households. The minister said the digital gap between rural and urban areas is significantly reduced, by an unspecified amount.

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• US Army develops natural-language voice-command AI for robots, tanks, etc. For search'n'rescue. For now

  Judge, JUDI, and executioner?
  Katyanna Quach Wed 21 Apr 2021 // 01:14 UTC

  The US Army is experimenting with machine-learning software that could be used to give tanks, trucks, and robots the ability to follow verbal orders from soldiers and communicate in natural language on the battlefield.

  Researchers at the Army's Combat Capabilities Development Command (aka DEVCOM) and the University of Southern California have been working on JUDI: a Joint Understanding and Dialogue Interface. This is a conversational AI system for military machines.

  As you might expect, unlike chatty digital assistants like Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa, JUDI isn’t designed for small talk about birthdays and the weather. It's trained to respond to spoken orders and handle situations military personnel are likely to find themselves in.

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• We seem to have materialized in a universe in which Barney the Purple Dinosaur is designing iPhones for Apple

  Is there a back button for reality?
  Katyanna Quach Tue 20 Apr 2021 // 23:56 UTC

  Apple CEO Tim Cook announced a bunch of colorful iThings on Tuesday, including iMac desktop computers in rainbow shades, its most powerful iPad yet, and – gasp – a purple iPhone.

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