Two weeks ago, a security researcher released a new flaw in Windows that could allow any user, or malicious program, to corrupt all the data on a hard drive , rendering it unusable. To exploit this failure, it was only necessary to ask any program to try to access a protected path on the hard disk. By doing so, the partition table was corrupted and all data on the computer was inaccessible. Microsoft will fix the problem shortly, but while the patch arrives, there are developers who have gotten to work to shield their programs. And one of the most recent to be updated has been Firefox.
Many things can happen when this security flaw is exploited. The slightest is that the disk is marked as “dirty” or “corrupt”, and Windows shows us a message every time we try to access it in which it reminds us, over and over again, that there may be errors in the unit. This is solved with a simple CHKDSK. It can also happen that Windows is not able to boot, entering Windows recovery when detecting the corrupted disk. This error can also be fixed with a simple CHKDSK command.
However, although it may seem like nothing to worry about, there is a third possibility that has been demonstrated in virtual machines. The partition table of the disk is totally corrupted and all data on the drive is lost forever. It is not possible to recover the drive with a CHKDSK in this case, and we can only use a data recovery software to recover the information, and then format to start from scratch.
Either way, Mozilla wants to save us a scare. And that’s why the new Firefox 85.0.1 has just been released.
Protect your hard drive with Firefox 85.0.1
This new version is nothing more than a minor quality and security update for the browser. In total, Mozilla has taken the opportunity to correct 5 errors that had been detected. And the most important is the failure related to the NTFS file system that could corrupt Windows hard drives.
To avoid this, what he has done is to declare as illegal all uses of: $ in file names. If someone tries to access a special NTFS directory similar to “cd c: / $ i30: $ bitmap” from the browser, it will be blocked, thus protecting the user’s hard drive.
- Other bugs fixed by Mozilla in this new version are:
- A crash bug in macOS with Apple Silicon processors.
- Fixed a bug that printed an additional blank page.
- Fixed a bug in the Cache API that blocked the browser.
- Fixed an inconsistency bug in URL schemes.
Update Firefox
This new version of the browser is already reaching all users. Those who already have the browser installed on their computer will receive it automatically while they use it, and it will be installed when restarting it without having to do anything else. In addition, we can check if we have it installed (or download the patch, if not) by entering Help> About Firefox .
We can also download the latest version of the browser from the Mozilla website to keep it up to date and prevent anyone from exploiting this flaw.
Chrome, Edge, and Windows 10 are still vulnerable to this problem with NTFS partition tables. It is expected that this week these errors will be solved, but it is better to take extreme precautions until then.