A “nasty” NTFS vulnerability in Windows 10 has once again been highlighted by infosec researcher Jonas L. The vulnerability could be exploited with a single-line command and corrupted into an NTFS-formatted hard drive. After the corruption, Windows will ask a person to restart their computer to resolve the issue.
Attackers can hide the code snippet in a ZIP file, a folder, or even a Windows shortcut file. If used incorrectly, it could damage a disk without anyone opening the malicious file. BleepingComputer has found that Windows Explorer will first try to display the file icon once a shortcut file has been downloaded to a Windows 10 computer and viewed within a folder. As a result, the attack will occur and an NTFS hard drive will be damaged.
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In terms of layman, if people look at a certain folder or extract a ZIP file with a certain piece of code on their computer, it will cause some chips to be damaged.
Jonas L explained to BleepingComputer that the vulnerability became exploitable with Windows 10 build 1803, also known as the Windows 10 April 2018 Update. The bug also persists in newer versions of Windows 10. Jonas L also reported the vulnerability in August 2020 and October 2020.
Microsoft responded to The Verge regarding the error, saying:
We are aware of this issue and will provide an update in a future release. The use of this technique is based on social engineering and as always we encourage our customers to practice good computer habits online, including being careful when opening unknown files or accepting file transfers.
The vulnerability could also be exploited if you paste a certain string of code into the browser. Windows 10 will try to automatically fix the corruption analyzer but also the vulnerability Will Dormann remarks that it needs manual intervention to recover.
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