Ten thousand Britons have been targeted on LinkedIn by recruiters for the Chinese and Russian intelligence services, according to an awarenss campaign launched by domestic spy agency MI5 this morning.
Details were previewed in this morning's Times newspaper, which warned specifically of people with "access to classified or sensitive information" being targeted by Britain's enemies.
The Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI), an MI5 offshoot, told the newspaper its figure of 10,000 compromise attempts over five years was a conservative one, with MI5 chief Ken McCallum saying in a prepared statement: "Malicious profiles on professional networking sites are being utilised on an industrial scale."
UK Government has submitted major reforms to the legislation surrounding how mobile masts are deployed in the countryside, with the aim of improving overall coverage and expediting the transition to 5G.
The proposed planning rules, which are subject to a consultation, emphasised upgrading existing masts over deploying new ones. Operators would be allowed to increase the width of already established masts by either 50 per cent or two metres (whichever is higher) without the need to obtain prior planning permission.
In unprotected areas (which excludes national parks, conservation areas, world heritage sites, and areas of outstanding natural beauty), masts would be able to reach heights of up to 25 metres. The previous limit was just 20 metres.
Microsoft engineers scrambled to improve the health of Azure on Tuesday after the cloud service started looking a bit green around the gills.
"We observed a subset of Azure Portal instances in the UK West became unhealthy, causing intermittent issues accessing the Azure Portal," Microsoft told users seeking to understand the 503 message they had just received.
The problem, which first manifested around noon UK time, was fixed shortly after 2pm. Little comfort that was to the valiant support people who suffered the lunchtime disruption.
Microsoft has announced 64-bit Visual Studio, but in its rush towards modern development some developers using older Windows or Azure technology are feeling left behind.
The forthcoming release of 64-bit Visual Studio 2022 (VS 2022) is huge news for devs who have been requesting this for over a decade. But the company still has some tricky issues to navigate with its developer community, especially those using older Microsoft technology, as well as areas where the full Visual Studio finds it hard to keep up with its nimbler cross-platform cousin, VS Code.
The context here is that today's Microsoft cares most about winning developers for its Azure platform. The combination of VS Code and GitHub is strategic because, although these tools work fine with competing platforms like AWS or Google Cloud, Microsoft can ensure that Azure is well integrated.
As a metaphor for its current financial plight, IBM's cloud platform was wobbling this moring for customers in cities across the world.
Big Blue, which last night released shrinking calendar Q1 numbers, confirmed to customers that its Infrastructure Management Systems were experiencing issues in the London, Dallas, Sydney and Frankfurt regions today from 8.20 UTC.
"Customers are not able to manage tags and they may observe inaccurate search results for classic infrastructure resources," said IBM in an email to customers, seen by us. The incident is being investigated and was designated a severity rating of 2.
Bad news for lockdown slimmers who've ignored advice about not needing to connect every friggin' appliance in their home to the internet: Talos researchers have sniffed out security flaws allowing attackers to hijack your air fryer.
Specifically, Cisco's infosec arm said it had tested and confirmed that the Cosori Smart 5.8-Quart Air Fryer CS158-AF, version 1.1.0, could be exploited by a theoretical fried-chicken-hater. As we've confirmed, the device – and we note there is a virtually identical "non-smart" one for the same price – is still widely available for sale.
The two flaws (CVE-2020-28592 and CVE-2020-28593) are both server code execution vulnerabilities. An attacker could exploit them by cooking up and sending a specially crafted packet to the device that contains a unique JSON object, which would then allow them to execute arbitrary code.
The received wisdom in ERP is that businesses design their processes in the system for everyone to follow. Except they don't.
Ten years after implementing SAP ECC worldwide, GSK considered its ERP unification something of a success.
But a close analysis of how business processes were actually running revealed that SAP's system was not exactly, well, unified.
If you need something else to direct your Brexit-induced rage towards, look no further than the big guy upstairs and a subset of people who believe in Him.
In their recently published book, Religion and Euroscepticism in Brexit Britain, Brunel University academic Dr Stuart Fox and the University of Exeter's Dr Ekaterina Kolpinskaya investigate how religious beliefs in Britain influenced the vote to leave the EU.
Their research suggests that one in five Brits' faith made them more likely to vote Leave, while a quarter of voters' beliefs helped place them in the Remain camp.
Column A few years back, I sat in astonishment as a young and very promising scientist explained that her colleagues kept lists of the people she’d want to avoid working for, because they had been identified - privately - as sexual harassers.
Ever since, I’ve wondered how some individuals can maintain multi-generation careers, exposed as harassers and bullies (and worse) only long after their departure, with damage done.
The problem infects the world of IT, too. It’s big — and getting worse.
Video Ingenuity has successfully performed a solar-powered autonomous flight on Mars, NASA confirmed on Monday.
The dual-bladed helicopter took off from the Jezero Crater at 0734 UTC, marking the first time in history an Earth-built aircraft has flown in skies away from Sol d. NASA has now named the patch of Martian surface that Ingenuity hovered over as the Wright Brothers Field, after human flight pioneers Orville and Wilbur Wright.
The Bank of England and HM Treasury have formed a Taskforce to "coordinate the exploration of a potential UK Central Bank Digital Currency" (CBDC).
Let's call it "Britcoin".
A Bank of England announcement quickly points out that no decision has been taken to greenlight Britcoin and omits any mention of why the time is right to ponder a digital currency.
The Register - Independent news and views for the tech community. Part of Situation Publishing
Biting the hand that feeds IT © 1998–2021
