There is a fairly serious bug in Windows 10 that can lead to data being compromised on the hard drive. This was discovered by a security researcher, who showed with some tests carried out together with the site Bleeping Computer, as a simple script inserted in a file system path is enough to block the operating system and force the user to reboot and repair the disk, if the data compromise is not too serious.
The script in question does not necessarily have to be entered from the command line to crash the hard drive. For example, an attacker can insert it in a system path within an HTML file created ad hoc, in a zip file, in a standard link file. The code, which we do not report here for security reasons, includes a reference to a particular attribute of the Windows NTFS file system. It is unclear why attempting to access this specific attribute could trigger a complete hard drive compromise. As the computer researcher who discovered the problem explains, a Windows registry key that could help diagnose the problem is not working.
The bug can be considered quite dangerous even for an ordinary user, precisely because to trigger the compromise of the disk you do not need to open a file or an executable, but you can even view the folder that contains them. The result is not necessarily data loss or a complete PC crash.
As shown by a video from Bleeping Computer, once the bug is triggered Windows 10 asks to restart to fix the disk compromise. In most cases this should be successful, but it may take more than an hour to complete. The risk is therefore that you may lose the unsaved data on which you were working before the activation of the bug.
To a request for comment on the issue, Microsoft responded that, as always, the company takes all reports of security issues seriously. As soon as possible, the Redmond company added, security patches will be provided to fix the problem. Until then it is good to pay close attention to any downloaded file, in particular .zip files, unpacking only those of safe origin. Should the problem arise, do not panic: let Windows 10 troubleshoot the disk and proceed immediately to delete the folder or file responsible for the compromise as soon as the PC is operational.
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