Windows 10 Bug That Can Corrupt Hard Drives

#1

Post by enzo1982 » Fri, Jan 15, 2021, 11:02 AM UTC

Windows 10 Bug That Can Corrupt Hard Drives
answers.microsoft.com

Re: Windows 10 Bug That Can Corrupt Hard Drives

#2

Post by Someone » Fri, Jan 15, 2021, 11:59 AM UTC

FTA: An example command that corrupts a drive is shown below

  cd c:\:$i30:$bitmap

So, ‘cd’ can trigger writes to a file system?

This also is a very scary bug as it allows a user level command to corrupt a disk.

Re: Windows 10 Bug That Can Corrupt Hard Drives

#3

Post by tinus_hn » Fri, Jan 15, 2021, 1:54 PM UTC

Someone wrote: post #2

FTA: An example command that corrupts a drive is shown below cd c:\:$i30:$bitmap So, ‘cd’ can trigger writes to a file system? This also is a very scary bug as it allows a user level command to corrupt a disk.

If you remember the con\con bug this isn’t that surprising.

Re: Windows 10 Bug That Can Corrupt Hard Drives

#4

Post by enzo1982 » Fri, Jan 15, 2021, 2:05 PM UTC

Someone wrote: post #2

FTA: An example command that corrupts a drive is shown below cd c:\:$i30:$bitmap So, ‘cd’ can trigger writes to a file system? This also is a very scary bug as it allows a user level command to corrupt a disk.

More discussion in this other thread which I didn't find when submitting this. [0]

It appears that the file system is not actually corrupted. The bug is just triggering a warning popup and a consistency check at the next boot. [1]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25787717 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25788171

Re: Windows 10 Bug That Can Corrupt Hard Drives

#5

Post by Someone » Fri, Jan 15, 2021, 2:46 PM UTC

enzo1982 wrote: post #4

Someone wrote: post #2

FTA: An example command that corrupts a drive is shown below cd c:\:$i30:$bitmap So, ‘cd’ can trigger writes to a file system? This also is a very scary bug as it allows a user level command to corrupt a disk.

More discussion in this other thread which I didn't find when submitting this. [0] It appears that the file system is not actually corrupted. The bug is just triggering a warning popup and a consistency check at the next boot. [1] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25787717 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25788171

Thanks. Especially that second link seems very much more plausible in its analysis “This is probably a simple check assertion somewhere which is seeing unexpected data passing through a call”

If you write a file system every bug can destroy years of data, silently, so “better be safe then sorry” should be a poster hanging on every wall, so even a simple directory traversal, upon seeing a “this normally shouldn’t happen” event, should raise a few flags.