Microsoft patch triggers blue screens

Computers were sent into the infamous blue screen of death state after Microsoft pushed out a bugged patch last week.

The affected update (2823324) was provided in security bulletin MS13-036 and caused the error when used with third party software.

Some Kaspersky users reported issues with the patch.  

"As a precaution, we stopped pushing 2823324 as an update when we began investigating the error reports, and have since removed it from the download centre," Microsoft Trustworthy Computing group manager Dustin Childs said.

However he denied that the system errors result in any data loss or affect all Windows customers, and recommended following guidance to uninstall the update if it is already installed.

According to Winbeta, the update results in an infinite reboot loop, while a blog by Woody Leonhard said that the update is causing blue screens on machines running Windows 7.

He said: “So far the problem is widely reported in Brazil, and at least one other credible sighting has occurred in South Africa and one in the UK - but it isn't clear if they were running the Brazilian version of Windows. Apparently the patch corrupts ntfs.sys. One fix that's been floated is to copy ntfs.sys from a good machine (same version of Windows) to a bluescreened machine.”

The moderate-level patch was released to address a vulnerability that requires an attacker to have physical computer access to exploit.

This article originally appeared at scmagazineuk.com