Legal

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

4. WordPress core contributor proposes treating Google FLoC as a security vulnerability

5. We need to talk about criminal adversaries who want you to eat undercooked onion rings

• Foxconn's showcase Wisconsin LCD factory becomes aspirational 'manufacturing ecosystem'

  $10bn investment now $672m, jobs promised now 1,454 instead of 13,000
  Laura Dobberstein Wed 21 Apr 2021 // 14:19 UTC

  Details of the agreement reached between Foxconn and Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC) were confirmed yesterday by Governor Tony Evers.

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• Half of Q1's malware traffic observed by Sophos was TLS encrypted, hiding inside legit requests to legit services

  Brit infosec outfit points to nefarious deeds within Discord, Google systems
  Gareth Corfield Wed 21 Apr 2021 // 13:32 UTC

  After years of warnings about security, surveillance, and unwanted state intrusion, one group of internet-connected folk has taken heed: malware operators.

  British infosec biz Sophos reckons just under half of malware traffic it saw in the wild during the opening three months of 2021 alone was using Transport Layer Security (TLS) to encrypt both its command-and-control traffic and data exfiltration. The company says that figure is up from 23 per cent of known malware traffic during the whole of 2020.

  "This is traffic we're seeing directly coming from malware, or it's something that's getting activated in browser... and being detected by us," lead researcher Sean Gallagher told The Register. He was open about this only being traffic observed by Sophos, meaning the true worldwide figure for TLS-encrypted malware traffic could differ.

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• Someone has to pay to keep the lights so data-viz outfit Grafana switches licence regime to AGPLv3

  AWS dodges the finger of blame as another open-sourcer tightens things up
  Richard Speed Wed 21 Apr 2021 // 12:45 UTC

  Data visualisation biz Grafana is switching its licence model from Apache 2.0 to the Affero General Public License (AGPL) v3.

  The decision, announced this morning by CEO and co-founder Raj Dutt, was made as the company continues balancing the "value creation" of its open-source community and the "value capture" of monetisation. Somebody, after all, has to pay to keep the lights on.

  "The choice of license is a key pillar of this strategy, and is something that we’ve deliberated on extensively since the company began," he said.

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• From book shop to tat bazaar to cloud behemoth to grocer, what's Amazon up to now? Augmented-reality hairstyles

  Curl up and dye, anyone?
  Richard Currie Wed 21 Apr 2021 // 12:01 UTC

  Though Smaug-like CEO Jeff Bezos is famously a hairless wonder, Amazon is striking out into yet more new territory with a London salon.

  So that's book shop cum everything shop cum cloud powerhouse cum grocer cum hair stylist.

  Amazon first made its bricks-and-mortar presence known after its purchase of US grocer Whole Foods when it started offering supermarket-esque delivery services under the Amazon Fresh name.

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• UK Telecoms Diversification Taskforce says Ofcom should take lead to ensure telcos don't rely on too few suppliers

  Finding Huawei out of this mess
  Matthew Hughes Wed 21 Apr 2021 // 11:15 UTC

  Ofcom should take a more active role in ensuring the UK's telecommunications providers do not become over-reliant on products from a small number of suppliers.

  Or so claims a a new report [PDF] from the Telecoms Diversification Taskforce (TDT), which has urged Government to instruct the British comms watchdog to treat diversification as a "strategic priority."

  Although the Ofcom has traditionally governed the telecoms sector with respect to pricing, competition, and spectrum access, it has historically been less concerned with the underlying hardware used by providers. That may change, if the TDT is listened to.

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• Microsoft renews cloud contracts with UK.gov amid ongoing legal spat with on-prem licence reseller

  Lawyers, say hello to the Digital Transformation Agreement 2021
  Richard Speed Wed 21 Apr 2021 // 10:30 UTC

  Microsoft has signed a fresh Memorandum of Understanding with the UK government to sell cloud services and biz apps at pre-agreed discounts amid accusations it is stifling the resale of excess on-premises software licences in the public sector.

  The MOU, specifically known as the Digital Transformation Agreement 2021 (DTA21), is a three-year contract that runs from 1 May. It covers Microsoft 365, which includes products such as Teams, the current Azure Pricing Arrangement, as well as expanding for the first time into new areas such as Dynamics 365, Power Platform and other Business Applications.

  Premier and Unified Support services are being wrapped into the agreement too, including Solutions Assessments and training courses designed to improve skills and promote use of Azure. DTA21 replaces DTA18.

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• 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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