Windows 10 crashes when accessing a path via the address bar: here is the 'path' to avoid

Source: HW Upgrade added 18th Jan 2021

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A bug on Windows 10 causes a blue screen and forces the machine to restart. Microsoft has promised a fix on all systems involved, but we don’t know when this will be released

of Nino Grasso published on , at 10: 21 in the Operating Systems channel

Windows Microsoft

Un bug present in the Windows code 10 would cause the onset of blue screens (the famous BSOD, Blue Screen of Death, in English) simply by accessing a path in the Chrome address bar or using other commands. The flaw was revealed by Jonas Lykkegaard, the same researcher we talked about last week regarding the vulnerability that causes corruption of NTFS drives on Windows 10.

The new bug is actually not that recent. The security researcher has been talking about it since last October, but Microsoft has not yet run for cover. Last week, when questioned by BleepingComputer who reported the news, she commented: “Microsoft has an ongoing commitment to consumers to investigate reported security issues and we will provide updates for affected devices as quickly as possible.”

The path that crashes all versions of Windows 10

From October Lykkegaard speaks of a path that, once entered in the address bar of Chrome, crashes the entire operating system proposing the irreversible blue screen. This is because, when programs and services want to interact with a device they can use a Win 32 Device Namespace as an argument for some programming functions. An example can be an application that wants to access the disk without using the native services of the OS.

The researcher claims to have discovered the bug on Win 32 Device Namespace of the “console multiplexer driver” which, according to Jonas L himself, should be used for “kernel / usermode ipc.” . Opening the path, which we report shortly after, Windows 10 crashes, even if the command is run by a user with the lowest privileges :

\. globalroot device condrv kernelconnect

In order for a service to communicate with this device it is necessary to pass the extended attribute “attach” and, if not, the operating system responds with a BSOD. This happens with all versions of Windows 10, at least since 1709 and subsequent. It is not clear to date whether the bug can be exploited for malicious purposes , but it is possible to use it in a very simple to cause a BSOD after each log-in. The ability to crash a system can also help in some scenarios, such as helping attackers mislead investigations after an attack has been carried out, or preventing any admin checks.