Code Published for Triggering a BSOD on Windows Computers -- Even If They're Locked (bleepingcomputer.com)

"A Romanian hardware expert has published proof-of-concept code on GitHub that will crash most Windows computers within seconds, even if the computer is in a locked state," writes BleepingComputer. An anonymous reader quotes their report: The code exploits a vulnerability in Microsoft's handling of NTFS filesystem images and was discovered by Marius Tivadar, a security researcher with Bitdefender. The expert's proof-of-concept code contains a malformed NTFS image that users can take and place on a USB thumb drive. Inserting this USB thumb drive in a Windows computer crashes the system within seconds, resulting in a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD). "Auto-play is activated by default," Tivadar wrote in a PDF document detailing the bug and its impact...

Tivadar contacted Microsoft about the issue in July 2017, but published the PoC code today after the OS maker declined to classify the issue as a security bug. Microsoft downgraded the bug's severity because exploiting it requires either physical access or social engineering (tricking the user).

Comments

Re:Autoplay

[Anonymous Coward]

Racism is a natural and in-built judgement response. Everybody discriminates against things every minute of every day. Racism is no different.

It's just a matter of people who are honest and admit they carry racism and those who are dishonest and pretend like they don't ever have such feelings. Admitting that you're racist doesn't mean you have to go out and do horrible things or treat people like crap. It just means that in the back of your mind, you are glad that you are who you are.

The rubber meets the road here: in the end, when a 7% minority (black males) commit the vast majority of all investigated (FBI crime stats) robberies, rapes, assaults, aggravated assaults, murders, and drug crimes, well, those who care for their safety and the safety of their families have two choices. One of those choices is totally unrealistic - convince that small minority to behave in a different way. The other choice is realistic, pragmatic, and achievable: avoid them whenever possible. You can call that "racism" if you want. Really though it's just pattern recognition.

What's very interesting is that blacks do this throughout the world. They do this in black-run nations. They do this in white nations that never had a history of slavery or systematic oppression. They do this in white nations that did have slavery and/or systematic oppression. They do this everywhere. Contrast this with the track record for Asian immigrants or Native Americans (who also faced terrible oppression) or Jews (same). You don't see those topping the crime charts in stark disproportion to their population numbers. This is telling. Again, it's pattern recognition.

Pattern recognition is all about cold hard facts and stats. It has nothing to do with what you might like things to be. It boils down to whether you want to make rational decisions that affect yourself and your family or whether you want to live in a fantasy world like the child who talks about the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus. It's time to grow up.

Another funny thing: as Jim Crow laws were repealed, as affirmative action was enabled, as "racism" became synonymous with "pure evil", well during this time, black crime has steadily INCREASED. Really puts the lie to the whole "because we have been oppressed" idea.

I call shenannigans on your racist BS

[davidwr]

First, I don't know what "total investigated" crimes mean, but according to the 2015 FBI crime stat, "Black or African American" represented 26.5% of total arrests. This includes women as well. Granted, that may be twice their representation in the population but it's nowhere near "a vast majority" of crimes. However, at least some of this disparity can be explained away comparing crime rates within socio-economic classes: If a socio-economic class that is heavily African-American also has a high crime rate and within that socio-economic class African-Americans commit crimes at the same rate as non-African-Americans, then your logic falls apart completely.

Looking just at the individual crimes you listed:
robberies - 53.5%, a slim majority
rapes - 28.2%
assaults - data not in chart, but "other assaults" are 30.8%
aggravated assaults - 32.1%
murders - 51% - a slim majority
drug crimes - not listed in chart, as just about any crime might be drug-related. Drug abuse violations - 27.0%, Driving under the influence (including alcohol) - 13.2% (right in line with the population)

Totalling just the measurable numbers above and leaving out drug crimes:

robberies - 39,052 of 73,023
rapes - 4,907 of 17,370
assaults - data not in chart, but "other assaults" are 254,600 of 826,920
aggravated assaults - 92,237 of 287,566
murders - includes non-negligent manslaughter 4,347 of 8,508
Total of these groups: 395143 of 1213387, or 32.5%, only slightly higher than the "other assaults" percentage, which is to be expected as that dominates this group.

Yes, 32.5% is much greater than the their overall arrest rate, and it's over 2 1/2 times their percentage of the population, which was at least 17.6% in 2015 (some Hispanics and pepole of two or more races may be African-American as well). However, much of the difference in crime rate in the United States is better attributed to socio-economic factors than anything else. To the extent that anything can be attributed to race, I strongly suspect that much of it is the legacy of "Jim Crow" and the racism of the past. I also suspect that some of it is a result of present-day racism, which, while not as prevalant as 50 years ago, still exists and still generates "defensive responses" - which in some cases may be criminal - in its victims.

The bottom line:

While your statement "those who care for their safety and the safety of their families have two choices" might actually be true if we lived in a community which matched your mistaken statistics, we don't live in such a country.

If you are going to appeal to racism on a technical forum, at least give your readers the courtesy of using statistics that are at least close to accurate. At least you did get the "7% of the population are Black males" right if you don't count Hispanics and those of more than one race, and assuming you meant the United States and not the entire world. Thank you for that much.

Oh, by the way, White people make up 82.6% of people arrested for driving under the influence, but they are 61% of the population (possibly up to 78% if all Hispanics and mult-racial people were also White).

2015 crime figures are from
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-t...

2015 population figures are from https://www.statista.com/stati...

I was unable to find a race/ethnic breakdown of licensed drivers or driving patterns of miles driven. It is possible that the high rate of White DUI arrests correspond to Whites having a higher-than-expected number of license drivers or miles driven that their percent of the population would suggest.

Eliminating Jim Crow didn't eliminate the problem

[davidwr]

Another funny thing: as Jim Crow laws were repealed, as affirmative action was enabled, as "racism" became synonymous with "pure evil", well during this time, black crime has steadily INCREASED. Really puts the lie to the whole "because we have been oppressed" idea.

Things are a lot more complicated than that. If your grandparents were oppressed, your parents probably didn't have the opportunities their non-oppressed peers had. If they didn't have those opportunities, then your socio-economic status is probably lower. To the extent that certain crimes are correlated with low socio-economic status, people whose grandparents were oppressed will be over-represented in statistics for those crimes.

There is also biology at work: If your grandparents were of a low socio-economic class, whether due to racial oppression or other reasons, your parents are more likely to have low nutrition and epigenic factors that impair their ability to succeed in life compared to their peers. This means they are more likely to be in a lower socio-economic class. If they are in a lower socio-economic class, odds are you will be too. These biological factors are independent of race - they are a fuction of the value your parents and their parents placed on good nutrition and good health, the ability of them to afford nutritious food and live a healthy lifestyle, and exposure to physical stress such as pollution and psychological stress such as worrying about bills. These aren't the only factors of course. If your parents or their parents placed a high value on education and instilled those values on your parents or you, the odds of you becoming successful are higher than if they were not. This is one reason Asian immigrants tend to do better than immigrants from other countries or poor families from other ethnicites: The parents of the immigrants valued education and passed those values on to the immigrants, who passed them on to their children.