Windows 10 bug can corrupt drives with a single command, patched on latest Insider build

Windows 10 is currently facing yet another bug that can potentially corrupt an NTFS formatted drive. The bug can be triggered by simply accessing a particular path or opening a specially made file. Reports suggest that Microsoft was supposed to roll out a fix last month. However, it has only managed to release the same for users on the Windows 10 Insider Build.

The bug was spotted by BleepingComputer last month. It was reported that it allowed almost any user, including low privilege users, to corrupt an NTFS-formatted hard drive with just a single-line command. Once executed, Windows tries to access the path only to end up with an error saying that “The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable”, eventually marking the drive as corrupt and requiring repair. As per the testing done by BleepingComputer, the one-liner code can be delivered hidden inside a Windows shortcut file, a ZIP archive, batch files, or various other vectors to trigger hard drive errors that corrupt the filesystem index.

Image credits: BleepingComputer

Windows would then ask the user to reboot the computer and run chkdsk to fix the corrupt hard disk. According to Microsoft, the drive has not actually gone bad, and Windows chkdsk should fix the problem. However, tests suggest that chkdsk does not fix the issue; therefore, Windows does not boot.

Microsoft was expected to fix the issue via the February Patch. While that did not happen, reports now suggest that the new Windows 10 Insider build 21322 does include an undocumented fix for the issue. Windows 10 now reports “The directory name is invalid” and no longer marks the NTFS volume as corrupted. It is expected that Microsoft should release a similar fix for all Windows 10 users eventually.

Last month Microsoft rolled out a new emergency update for Windows 10 to patch a bug causing BSOD (blue screen of death) while connecting to Wi-Fi networks. The issue only specifically targeted the newer WPA3 security, essentially only a small number of users were affected.

The post Windows 10 bug can corrupt drives with a single command, patched on latest Insider build appeared first on xda-developers.

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