Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

A security researcher has released working exploit code for four Linux kernel flaws that each let a local user gain root, the highest level of access on a machine. Kernel maintainers have fixed all four over the past few weeks, so a system running an up-to-date kernel is not affected. But the exploit code is now public, and any machine still running an older kernel should be updated. The flaws are called DirtyAH6, TUNderflow, PPPoEject, and DiagSpill. Researcher Asim Manizada found them and reported them to the Linux kernel security team in mid-July. He published a technical write-up with working…

In brief Coinbase filed with the CFTC through Coinbase Derivatives to list single-stock perpetual futures in the US, seeking to bring the popular crypto instrument to individual equities. Perpetual futures track an asset’s price with no expiration date; Coinbase plans roughly 50 to 60 contracts—including Apple, Microsoft, Tesla and Nvidia—possibly launching later this year. The move extends Coinbase’s onshore derivatives push amid a broader race to bring perps to U.S. traders. Coinbase is looking to import one of crypto’s most popular trading instruments into the U.S. stock market, filing to list single-stock perpetual futures with federal regulators.The filing, submitted Friday…

Kearny, Ariz., is a town on the brink. Located at the foot of the Dripping Spring Mountains in eastern Arizona, this small community of 2,000 people sources its water from the Gila River, a verdant waterway that snakes by the southern edge of town. But in March, the snowpack feeding the river had dropped to precipitous levels: It was just 1 percent of its historic norm for that time of year. The Gila River water commissioner slashed Kearny’s allotment of river water by some 85 percent. And in April, town officials announced that “Zero Day” was approaching, at which point…

You may have heard her songs, seen her videos, maybe even attended one of her concerts … but have you seen the new genus of Australian plant bugs named after Taylor Swift? Scientists at the University of California, Riverside recently described a new genus of plant bugs, they’ve named Swiftiephylus, in honor of the Grammy-winning U.S. singer. The genus contains 12 new species of plant bugs. Four of the insects are named after Taylor Swift or her albums: Swiftiephylus taylorae, Swiftiephylus amator, Swiftiephylus intrepidus, and Swiftiephylus poetorum. The first is a Latinized version of Taylor; the others are references to…

Reading Time: < 1 minute Wisconsin Watch partners with Gigafact to produce Fact Briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. Read our methodology to learn how we check claims. Yes. Milwaukee County sales and property taxes have increased under County Executive David Crowley. The Democratic nominee in the Nov. 3 election for governor takes credit for “the largest property tax cut” in the county’s history. That occurred after Act 12, a bipartisan state law, allowed local leaders to raise Milwaukee city and county sales taxes and provided local governments in Wisconsin more state aid. The law was largely aimed at helping…

Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at a litmus test on domestic support for Russia’s war, massive pro-government rallies in Iran, and calls for Irish reunification. Expected Results “Millions of people stand behind our fighters.” That is the message that the Kremlin is hoping to send as Russia kicks off its first State Duma elections since the Russia-Ukraine war erupted in February 2022. The results are all but certain; support for United Russia, the party most closely associated with President Vladimir Putin, is polling at nearly 40 percent. But experts argue that the outcome matters less for Moscow…

US President Donald Trump has announced that he is “immediately” banning CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House, the latest twist in his fraught relationship with American media outlets. In a lengthy post on Truth Social on Friday, Trump said that the outlets “constantly write or report fiction or lies” about his administration, although he provided no examples. Trump later called it a “very simple ban”, but did not explain how it would work. It is unclear whether employees of those outlets would be prevented from entering the White House grounds. The move is likely to be met…

Lance Whitney/ZDNET ZDNET’s key takeaways Fake meeting invites can infect your system with malware. Many email programs may automatically add invites to your calendar. Don’t respond to the email or invite. Instead, report them and delete them. Have you ever received a calendar invite via email that turned out to be fake and even malicious? I’ve gotten these in Microsoft Outlook. Many email programs automatically add an invite to your calendar before you can even accept or decline it. That means you may not be aware that the event information is now in your calendar, waiting for you to access…

PrismML has released Ternary Bonsai 2 27B, a ternary-weight version of Qwen3.8 27B. The language model occupies 5.93 GB, against 53.80 GB in FP16. PrismML reports that it keeps 98.2% of the parent model’s average across 20 benchmarks. The model accepts text and images and supports a 262K-token context. PrismML demos it driving Cline coding agents and computer use on an RTX 5090. It arrives 2 months after the first Bonsai 27B, whose ternary variant retained about 95%. Is it deployable? Yes. The Apache 2.0 weights run today on a 16 GB laptop or a single 24 GB GPU. You…

Microsoft Teams will soon let administrators tweak the list of file extensions commonly associated with malware and security threats to meet their company’s security requirements. This will come as an update to Weaponizable File Protection, a built-in Teams messaging safety feature that scans conversations and blocks chat or channel messages with dangerous, high-risk file attachments. As detailed in a new Microsoft 365 roadmap entry, the feature is currently in development and will start rolling out in November 2026. “Microsoft Teams is expanding admin controls for Weaponizable File Protection. Administrators will be able to customize which file types are blocked in Teams to align with…