This problem seems to be introduced around the time of Windows 10 1803. Prior versions of Windows do not appear to be affected. I'll give Microsoft a shot at addressing this before disclosing what the value of <specialdir> is. Though I question how such things get prioritized...
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Will Dormann Retweeted Will Dormann
Why? Almost 2 years ago I reported to them NTFS filesystems that can cause windows to BSOD when they're mounted. e.g. by double-clicking a VHD or VHDX file. That's still not fixed.https://twitter.com/wdormann/status/1095799927765127170 …
Will Dormann added,
Will Dormann @wdormannInspired by my earlier accidental discovery that a FreeNAS 11.2 ISO written to a USB drive with Rufus will cause Windows 7 to BSOD, I got to wondering how well modern operating systems handle malformed filesystems. Windows, Linux, macOS, FreeBSD all fail. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3MeifE2oFw …Show this thread3 replies 9 retweets 44 likesShow this thread -
And since the cat it is out of the bag: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/windows-10-bug-corrupts-your-hard-drive-on-seeing-this-files-icon/ … It's probably worth mentioning that browsing the internet with old Edge browser could lead to NTFS corruption. It will happily allow a page on the internet to reference a local path. Don't use that Edge version.
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I've not seen another modern browser that allows a page that lives on the internet to be able to directly access a local file resource. But "classic" (non-Chromium) Edge? YOLO!pic.twitter.com/PvMz3PkakX
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Compare this vs. the Chromium-based Edge, or just about any other browser. A page on the internet can't just directly access a file on your local filesystem. Because this is dangerous.pic.twitter.com/5FWee5tqNd
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And while I haven't seen a variant that can trigger it directly from a (legacy) Edge browser on an internet page, it's worth mentioning that there's a vaguely-related (badness via accessing a path) BSOD bug released recently:https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/windows-10-bug-causes-a-bsod-crash-when-opening-a-certain-path/ …
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Specifically, I didn't see a way to get legacy Edge to obey the '.' in \\.\globalroot\device\condrv\kernelconnect However, as with the NTFS corruption bug, this can be triggered by something as innocuous as opening a file from a website. e.g., an ISO file:pic.twitter.com/AQL7Flfpk6
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Replying to @wdormann
The way it works is: \\.\ or \\?\ or \??\ will start by looking in the callers local devicemappic.twitter.com/xBkouKg9wZ
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if nothing found there- look in \GLOBAL?? there we find a symlink named GLOBALROOTpic.twitter.com/CEbruD2Plz
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it sends us to the root of nt obj world here we can enter the device folderpic.twitter.com/3rvMUXXgCB
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there is some additional funky stuff though . this is the magic filenames that redirect you from anywhere:pic.twitter.com/MGmwsNLtEB
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so...this actually works- \\.\ is special with allowing path backward traversalpic.twitter.com/Qjb1rwqex1
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