The Register

1. Texan's alleged Amazon bombing effort fizzles: Militia man wanted to take out 'about 70 per cent of the internet'

   Someone hasn't heard of redundancy

   The US Justice Department on Friday announced the arrest of Seth Aaron Pendley, 28, for allegedly planning to blow up a single Amazon data center in Ashburn, Virginia, which he thought would knock out around 70 per cent of the internet.…

2. UK's National Cyber Security Centre recommends password generation idea suggested by El Reg commenter

   Who says everything below the line is a cesspit of useless filth?

   Nearly a third of Britons use the name of their pet or a family member as a password, the National Cyber Security Centre has said as it advised folk to adopt what looks very much like a Register forum user's suggestion for secure password generation.…

3. CyberBattleSim: Microsoft's open-source Holodeck in which autonomous attackers, defenders battle it out

   Very 2021 to have AI bots fight in simulated networks for our entertainment (and science)

   Microsoft has open-sourced software that pits machine-learning-powered network intruders against automated defenders inside virtual networks.…

4. How do we stamp out the ransomware business model? Ban insurance payouts for one, says ex-GCHQ director

   New laws needed to cut off incentive to crooks, argues Marcus Willett

   Increasing numbers of senior ex-GCHQ people have called for laws preventing businesses using cyber insurance to buy off ransomware attackers – with the money merely perpetuating the criminals' business model.…

5. India uses controversial Aadhaar facial biometrics to identify COVID vaccination recipients

   Safer than eyeballs or fingerprints, apparently

   India’s National Health Authority has commenced a pilot of facial recognition software as a means of identifying people as they queue in the nation's COVID-19 vaccine centres.…

6. Belgian police seize 28 tons of cocaine after 'cracking' Sky ECC's chat app encryption

   Euro cops take $1.65bn of blow off the streets after poring over messages

   The Belgian plod says it seized 27.64 tons of cocaine worth €1.4bn (£1.2bn, $1.65bn) from shipments into Antwerp in the past six weeks after defeating the encryption in the Sky ECC chat app to read drug smugglers' messages.…

7. There’s a whole wide world of web application firewall options – so how do you choose the right one?

   Take the heat out of your firewall deployment

   Webcast  If you’ve got an application which faces the web, no one would dispute that you should probably have a web application firewall sitting in front of it.…

8. Indian defense chief admits China’s cyber-weapons would ‘disrupt large number of systems’ whenever Beijing presses the button

   Working to improve 'cyberwalls', but for now swift recovery is main strategy

   Video  The highest-ranked officer in India’s armed forces has admitted that China has cyber-war capabilities that can overwhelm his nation’s defenses and suggested that only cross-forces collaboration will get India to parity with its giant neighbor.…

9. Another supply-chain attack? Android maker Gigaset injects malware into victims' phones via poisoned update

   Software nasty also 'persists after a factory reset'

   Android smartphones from Gigaset have been infected by malware direct from the manufacturer in what appears to be a supply-chain attack.…

10. Update on PHP source code compromise: User database leak suspected

    Possible culprit: Ancient code running in production. A vuln 'would not be terribly surprising' says maintainer

    PHP maintainer Nikita Popov has posted an update concerning how the source code was compromised and malicious code inserted – blaming a user database leak rather than a problem with the server itself.…