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Scientists from the World Cancer Research Fund found there were 640 new cases of the disease in 2023, up from 158 in 2001.

Former Arsenal midfielder Krystian Bielik found himself in an altercation with a group of Pompey fans while trying to retrieve the ball during the Championship match on September 5.

by George Whittaker

Google is exploring a new approach to Linux kernel security that could significantly change how device drivers interact with the operating system. The experimental project, known as Kage, uses compiler-based sandboxing to isolate drivers inside the kernel, potentially limiting the damage caused by memory corruption, programming errors, and exploitable vulnerabilities without requiring drivers to run as separate user-space processes.

The research was presented at the Linux Plumbers Conference 2026, held October 5–7, with Stanford University and Google researcher Zachary Yedidia discussing how LLVM's Lightweight Fault Isolation (LFI) technology can create restricted execution environments for native kernel code. Unlike conventional isolation techniques, which often depend on separate processes or virtual machines, Kage attempts to preserve the performance advantages of kernel-space execution while reducing the amount of memory individual drivers can access.

Early prototypes have already demonstrated the concept using NVMe storage, networking, and Wi-Fi drivers. However, Kage remains an experimental research project rather than a feature available in mainstream Linux distributions. Its developers are still investigating performance, hardware access, and compatibility with more complicated drivers, including graphics hardware.

Why Device Drivers Remain a Major Linux Security Challenge

Linux device drivers are responsible for connecting the operating system to hardware components, including graphics cards, network adapters, storage controllers, USB devices, and wireless chipsets. Most traditional Linux drivers execute in kernel space, giving them privileged access to system resources and the ability to interact directly with hardware. This architecture is one reason Linux can deliver high performance across such a broad range of devices, but it also creates a significant security challenge.

When an ordinary application encounters a memory error, the operating system can often terminate that process without affecting the rest of the system. Kernel drivers operate under different conditions. Because they typically share the kernel's address space and privileges, an invalid memory access or exploitable vulnerability can affect unrelated kernel components, potentially resulting in a system crash, privilege escalation, or complete compromise of the operating system.

The challenge becomes more complicated when considering the enormous number of drivers supported by Linux. Some are maintained by large organizations with extensive testing infrastructure, while others receive contributions from smaller development teams or individual maintainers. Even carefully reviewed drivers can contain bugs, particularly when they interact with complicated hardware, asynchronous operations, and memory-management mechanisms.

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OpenTable reveals Essex’s most booked restaurants in September, from seafood at Alec’s and tasting menus at Stark to steaks, Italian food and pub favourites.

A man has been brought to safety after being spotted on the roof of a building

Andrew Garfield stars in The Uprising, Paul Greengrass’s historical drama about Essex’s 1381 Peasants’ Revolt, released nationwide in UK cinemas on October 9.

Stand Up To Racism Colchester claims its campaign stall and members were 'attacked' in Clacton.

Bryn Smart, former deputy district judge and senior Ellisons partner, has died aged 80. He had a distinguished legal career in Essex.

The beach is within view for many of these homes

Independent researchers say they've identified a large "fleet" of AI agents apparently running on Tencent infrastructure and making parallel queries against Alibaba's Amap mapping service. TechCrunch reports: Researchers, however, resisted the term "swarm," noting that there seems to be little coordination between their different queries. "'Agent fleet,' not 'swarm:'" one researcher wrote in the preliminary report, "many parallel agents on the same kind of task, with no sign of communication between them." The agents were discovered by monitoring traffic to the domain-scanning service urlquery, a technique that previously revealed long-running activity by OpenAI agents. AI agents often use urlquery to load websites that they cannot access directly, leaving a record of their activities that can be valuable to researchers. In this case, the record showed queries to Alibaba's Amap service, seeking directions to different entrances of various public places, including a park, a zoo, and a hospital. The research is ongoing and so few details are available, but the behavior shows how persistent AI agent activity has become on the internet. In the wake of the Hugging Face incident, many researchers are actively monitoring for rogue agent activity on the internet. Much of that activity has been easy to find because agents tend to use the same techniques and make little effort to conceal themselves.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenTable reveals Essex’s most booked restaurants in September, from seafood at Alec’s and tasting menus at Stark to steaks, Italian food and pub favourites.

Kelvedon Parish Council has condemned Braintree District Council’s draft Local Plan as “fundamentally unsound”, warning it relies on unproven infrastructure.

A man seen stumbling along the A120 was run over by a police car sent to help him, an inquest heard.

A man has been brought to safety after being spotted on the roof of a building

Andrew Garfield stars in The Uprising, Paul Greengrass’s historical drama about Essex’s 1381 Peasants’ Revolt, released nationwide in UK cinemas on October 9.

Braintree Council has updated its local plan after around 2,000 consultation responses with more transport, healthcare and education infrastructure plans.

More than 750 runners raised nearly £55,000 for St Helena Hospice at the Harwich Half Marathon and 10k, with Olympic boxer Lewis Richardson taking part.

Bryn Smart, former deputy district judge and senior Ellisons partner, has died aged 80. He had a distinguished legal career in Essex.

Braintree Village’s ice rink returns for a fourth season next month as the shopping centre gears up for Christmas.

Feering Community Centre has undergone a makeover to improve its energy efficiency and reduce its carbon footprint.