Shocking current-affairs news: Cupertino idiot-tax operation hits resistance over harsh repair policy

Apple appears to be discouraging owners of recent iPhones from having device batteries serviced by a third-party repair service, an exercise in market control that looks ill-timed amid growing scrutiny of potential anti-competitive moves by tech giants and pushback against limitations on repair rights.

According to equipment repair nerve-center iFixit and Justin Ashford, who runs The Art of Repair channel on YouTube, third-party battery replacement in an iPhone XR, XS, or XS Max running iOS 12 or iOS 13 beta leads to the presentation of a "Service" message in the Battery Health sub-menu that's part of the fondleslab's Battery settings menu.

This message urges the iPhone owner to have the newly installed battery replaced – which Apple advises should be done only through an Apple Store or authorized service provider due to potential safety issues – even if an Apple-supplied battery is installed by a third-party.

"Apple is locking batteries to their iPhones at the factory, so whenever you replace the battery yourself – even if you’re using a genuine Apple battery from another iPhone – it will still give you the 'Service' message," wrote Craig Lloyd, staff writer for iFixit.

"The only way around this is – you guessed it – paying Apple money to replace your iPhone battery for you."

Don't believe the numbers, say security watchers, it's worse than ever

Black Hat Ransomware infections may be down, but only because attackers are getting better at targeting them.

This is according to a report from Malwarebytes, whose team said that when it comes to crimeware figures, numbers can be deceiving.

Speaking to El Reg ahead of the 2019 Black Hat conference, Malwarebytes Labs director Adam Kujawa said that, while instances of consumer ransomware infections are down 25 per cent over the last year, attacks on businesses are skyrocketing, up a whopping 235 per cent over the same period.

Overall, the numbers would show that ransomware numbers have fallen.

After peaking at more than 5.7 million total detections in August of 2018, just over 3 million attacks by lockup malware were detected in June 2019.

Moscow's 'sovereign internet' effort means new rules for the bad guys too

Black Hat The introduction of Russia's Sovereign Internet rules is having an impact on the way criminal hackers around the world do business.

The rule would lead to Russia developing its own standalone network that could be cut off from all connections outside of the country if need be and continue to function.

"It creates this infrastructure that kind of isolates Russia a little bit," Charity Wright, a threat intelligence analyst with IntSights, told The Register.

"A lot of outsiders feel threatened because they feel they may not have access to the Russian internet, but really Russia's intention is to become sovereign over their own infrastructure so if there is an attack to cut them off, they can go on with business as usual."

While the Russian government is notorious for turning a blind eye to criminal hackers (and in some cases even enlisting them for official activities), the new law will still have a major impact on how cybercrime is conducted both within and outside the country.

That's plane crazy, says Dreamliner maker

Black Hat A Black Hat presentation on how to potentially hijack a 787 – by exploiting bugs found in internal code left lying around on a public-facing server – was last night slammed as "irresponsible and misleading" by Boeing.

Boeing, however, insists the software on the second network cannot be exploited as IOActive described, nor can a miscreant direct the avionics from other networks, due to restrictions in place, such as hardware filters that only allow data to flow between networks rather than instructions or commands.

“We have got very limited data, so it’s impossible to say if the mitigation factors Boeing say they have work.

They told us work-in-progress software destined for the 787 was stored on a server belonging to the aircraft manufacturer's research and development labs.

This box had been, like so many databases and other systems recently, accidentally left open to the internet, which isn't particularly wise.

Now that's what we call a joint task force: Uncle Sam chills out, relaxes recruitment rules on drugs

Black Hat America's crime-fighters, desperate to recruit white-hat hackers to collar spies and cyber-crooks, have been quietly and slightly relaxing the ban on hiring anyone who has used illegal drugs.

Generally speaking, dabbling in any kind of substance abuse will rule you out of the running for a job at the NSA, Homeland Security, the FBI, and so forth.

It should, therefore, be no surprise that the Feds have been unable to recruit talented hacker folks, due to their past experimentation with chemicals.

What with marijuana now legal in various US states, including California, and it being 2019 and all, and recruitment of infosec bods is still somewhat of a struggle, it appears Uncle Sam is easing up.

So, if you haven't done anything bonkers, like injected mephedrone into your eyeballs over breakfast, and can pass, and continue to pass, a drug test, and you have the infosec skillz needed, Uncle Sam may well want you... to apply, at least.