An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Nightmare Eclipse, the pseudonym of a researcher with an ongoing, very public beef with Microsoft, has dropped yet another Windows zero-day. On Tuesday, Nightmare Eclipse disclosed SignDrop, a vulnerability that gives local users full System rights on some versions of Windows. The vulnerability resides in the Common Log File System, which Microsoft describes as a "general-purpose logging service used by software clients running in user-mode or kernel-mode." By forcing a privileged process such as Windows Defender to open a crafted CLFS container, an attacker with ordinary user rights can abuse the privileged file creation to elevate privileges to System.

[...] Researcher Will Dormann said in an interview that he has been able to reproduce the exploit and that it works as described, but not on all versions of Windows 11. But there's a catch, he said. "The requirements are important in that it seems to require Windows 26H2, and one that has existed for more than 90 days, it seems," he explained. "That is, you can't just take a new 26H2 system and install updates and have it work." For a system to be vulnerable, Dormann said, the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\CLFS\Authentication\Mode
value must be 0 or 1." Of the many machines Dormann uses, only a single one met this requirement. Microsoft said in a statement that it was investigating the vulnerability and had no evidence it was being exploited in the wild. The company also said Defender blocks potential exploitation attempts.

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Longtime Slashdot readers cold fjord and sinij share news that the FAA grounded flights nationwide after a communications failure disrupted air traffic control centers across the country. By Friday evening, the outage had resulted in nearly 5,000 flight cancellations and roughly 10,000 delays, with no timeline for restoring normal operations. Rumors are swirling that this could be related to the FAA's newly deployed SMART AI system or Microsoft's recent global outage, but both the agency and Microsoft said they had no indication that their technology was responsible. Business Insider reports: US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said just after 4:15 pm. Eastern time that the nationwide flight traffic halt came "following a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers." "FAA technicians are investigating the issue," he said in a post on X. The outage comes the same week as the FAA deployed SMART, a new AI tool to help air traffic control. ASI, the company that makes the SMART system for the FAA, said that Friday's issues weren't "based on or a result of the SMART system, any product of ASI or our integration with FAA and ATC."

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said in a press conference Friday, when asked if the AI system might be related to the outage: "That's what we're looking at." Microsoft, which faced massive issues across its services this week, also said that it had "no indication" the ground stop was related to any Microsoft services. Meanwhile, the FAA said that the ground stop was due to "extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety." UPDATE 1:33 UTC: Secretary Mullin and Secretary Duffy are currently briefing members of the press on the issue.

UPDATE 1:46 UTC: The FAA has lifted the nationwide ground stop after more than four hours. Officials said the disruption appears to have stemmed from a network router issue that cascaded nationwide, with no evidence of a cyberattack or connection to Microsoft's recent outage. Airlines warned that disruptions could continue in Saturday.

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SpaceX's 15th Starship test flight successfully reached orbit Friday, but its historic attempt to catch both stages at the launch tower was derailed when the Super Heavy booster malfunctioned, forcing controllers to abort its return before it exploded after splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico. The upper-stage Starship did, however, successfully deploy 26 Starlink satellites and is scheduled to complete 15 orbits before attempting an unprecedented tower catch on Saturday. If successful, it would mark the first time a spacecraft has returned from orbit to land vertically at a launch tower. The Bakersfield Californian reports: The original goal was to retrieve every single piece of the rocket for the purpose of future recycling, something yet to be achieved anywhere in the world. Musk sees this leading to the kind of fast and consistent launch rates necessary for building moon bases and sending people to Mars. Shortly after reaching orbit, Starship dropped off 26 of the company's most advanced Starlink satellites. The plan is for Starship to complete 15 laps around the world at an altitude of around 170 miles (275 kilometers) before heading back to the launch site for Saturday's grand finale.

SpaceX had already made three booster grabs at the company's sprawling Starbase near the U.S.-Mexico border. That made Friday's miss all the more surprising. "Well, that certainly isn't the news that we had hoped to hear for today," observed SpaceX launch commentator Kate Tice, adding that it was in line with the many rigorous safety checks to protect the pad. No explanation was provided for what went wrong. This was the first attempt to capture the upgraded version of the booster that stretches 236 feet (72 meters) -- the production model for moon and Mars expeditions. It will also be the first time the company attempts to catch the spacecraft, which spans 171 feet (52 meters). Together, they form the world's biggest and most powerful rocket -- an astounding 407 feet (124 meters) in height.

The spacecraft portion of the 14 previous Starships ended up in the ocean, either by design at flight's end or by accident in a stream of flaming wreckage. During the first full-scale test flight in 2023, multiple engines failed to ignite and the tumbling rocket's self-destruct system was activated. The last test, in September, was the first to reach orbit, but SpaceX did not try to recover any of the rocket stages. You can watch a recorded livestream of the launch on YouTube.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Longtime Slashdot readers cold fjord and sinij share news that the FAA grounded flights nationwide after a communications failure disrupted air traffic control centers across the country. By Friday evening, the outage had resulted in nearly 5,000 flight cancellations and roughly 10,000 delays, with no timeline for restoring normal operations. Rumors are swirling that this could be related to the FAA's newly deployed SMART AI system or Microsoft's recent global outage, but both the agency and Microsoft said they had no indication that their technology was responsible. Business Insider reports: US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said just after 4:15 pm. Eastern time that the nationwide flight traffic halt came "following a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers." "FAA technicians are investigating the issue," he said in a post on X. The outage comes the same week as the FAA deployed SMART, a new AI tool to help air traffic control. ASI, the company that makes the SMART system for the FAA, said that Friday's issues weren't "based on or a result of the SMART system, any product of ASI or our integration with FAA and ATC."

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said in a press conference Friday, when asked if the AI system might be related to the outage: "That's what we're looking at." Microsoft, which faced massive issues across its services this week, also said that it had "no indication" the ground stop was related to any Microsoft services. Meanwhile, the FAA said that the ground stop was due to "extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety." UPDATE 1:33 UTC: Secretary Mullin and Secretary Duffy are currently briefing members of the press on the issue.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

WASHINGTON (ANP/RTR) - Een verouderd communicatiesysteem voor de luchtverkeersleiding raakte vrijdag overbelast. Daardoor begon het foutieve gegevens te verstrekken en leidde dit tot het landelijke vliegverbod dat meer dan vier uur duurde. Dat heeft de Amerikaanse minister van Transport Sean Duffy gezegd in een persconferentie in het Witte Huis.

Veel Amerikaanse luchtvaartmaatschappijen hervatten ondertussen hun vluchten, waaronder American Airlines, Delta Air Lines en Southwest Airlines.

"Onze switches en routers raakten simpelweg overbelast door de hoeveelheid data... Ze begonnen inconsistente gegevens te leveren en daarom hebben we het systeem uitgeschakeld", aldus Duffy. Er was ook sprake van haperende communicatie en onregelmatige radargegevens. Duffy verweet het Amerikaanse Congres dat het geen financiering had verstrekt voor een nieuw systeem dat volgens hem dergelijke storingen had kunnen voorkomen. Hij pleitte voor 50 miljard dollar (ruim 45 miljard euro) om het systeem te moderniseren.

Volgens FlightRadar24 werden meer dan 6600 vluchten geannuleerd en liepen 8600 vluchten vertraging op; voor zaterdag waren er bovendien al 700 vluchten geschrapt. Luchtvaartanalisten stellen dat het dagen kan duren voordat luchtvaartmaatschappijen hun vluchtschema's weer op orde hebben. "Het zal langzaam gaan", zei minister Duffy hierover. Volgens hem zijn tienduizenden mensen gestrand op vliegvelden door het hele land.

De Amerikaanse minister van Binnenlandse Veiligheid Markwayne Mullin zei tijdens diezelfde persconferentie dat er geen sprake was van een cyberaanval. Ook was er geen verband met de huidige softwareproblemen van Microsoft, aldus Mullin.

LA HAVANA (ANP/DPA) - Cuba bereidt zich voor op een mogelijke Amerikaanse militaire aanval. Dat heeft de Cubaanse president Miguel Díaz-Canel vrijdag gezegd.

"Wij zijn vastbesloten om elke poging tot buitenlandse militaire agressie tegen ons land af te slaan", aldus Díaz-Canel, die zijn uitspraken deed tijdens de 'Nationale Dag van Defensie' op het eiland.

Hij benadrukte echter dat Cuba een vredelievend land is en geen enkele bedreiging vormt voor de nationale veiligheid van de Verenigde Staten.

De Amerikaanse president Donald Trump antwoordde donderdag op de vraag of hij een militaire interventie zou overwegen om Cuba te "bevrijden": "Ik wil de kwestie-Cuba afhandelen voordat ik vertrek. We houden het nauwlettend in de gaten. Het gaat er erg slecht. In feite is het een mislukte staat."

Trump heeft herhaaldelijk gezinspeeld op de mogelijkheid van een Amerikaanse militaire interventie in Cuba.

WASHINGTON (ANP/RTR/BLOOMBERG) - Het Witte Huis heeft vrijdag laten weten dat de Amerikaanse president Donald Trump donderdag een ontmoeting zal hebben met de Russische president Vladimir Poetin en de Chinese president Xi Jinping.

De ontmoeting vindt plaats in de marge van de APEC-top (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) in het Chinese Shenzhen.

"De president heeft duidelijk gemaakt dat hij onder andere de kwestie van het verminderen van het aantal kernwapens in de wereld zal bespreken. President Trump is van mening dat deze proliferatie zeer gevaarlijk is", vertelde een woordvoerster aan journalisten.

"Ik denk dat de president absoluut van plan is om de kwestie Iran aan te kaarten tijdens de trilaterale ontmoeting met Xi en Poetin", aldus een Amerikaanse functionaris, die anoniem wilde blijven.

Trump zal ook een lunch hebben met Xi, maar er zijn geen plannen voor een privéontmoeting tussen de Amerikaanse president en Poetin.

Na verschillende schandalen bij realityprogramma’s beloofde RTL met B&B Vol Liefde beterschap. Een authentiek programma over échte mensen die oprecht op zoek zijn naar liefde.

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Sean Duffy, Trump’s transportation secretary, acknowledges tech failure led federal aviation officials to shut down system and ground flights, though details are scarce

• US aviation agency lifts nationwide ground stop affecting all air travel

• Chaos at US airports as flight stoppage grinds travel plans to a halt

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Ben Doherty, a Guardian Australia reporter, is currently on a plane at Sydney airport, waiting to fly to the US. He writes:

US-bound flights out of Sydney in Australia have been held on the tarmac, some for up to three hours. Flights are being gradually cleared for departure after being held in Australia by the FAA out of concern planes would not be able to land once they reached the US.

Outages in communication, radio frequencies and radar began in Chicago, according to the Air Current, an aviation news site.

There is, as of now, no clear explanation of what, exactly, caused the “telecommunications outage” that forced the sudden halt to all departures at US airports.

According to the tracing site FlightAware, 8,553 flights were delayed on Friday, and there were 6,816 cancelled flights.

While Donald Trump was uncharacteristically silent throughout the crisis, his secretaries of transportation and homeland security, Sean Duffy and Markwayne Mullin, appeared to suggest that the cause of the outage was that older technology became overwhelmed with data after new technology was introduced by the FAA.

Mullin, a former Oklahoma senator now leading the US Department of Homeland Security, said “we’ve seen zero evidence that this was a cyber-attack.”

This is just the second nationwide ​ground stop of all departures since the 9/11 attacks. The previous one came in January 2023, when the FAA paused all ⁠domestic departures for less than two hours.

As disruptions ripple through the global aviation system, we will continue to track the impact of the outage, and look for answers as to what, exactly, went wrong.

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Yamanashi, Japan
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Two women pause beneath red lanterns on a wet street in Tokyo, Japan. July 2026.

A History of Telephone Speaking Clocks