Last Tuesday, loads of Linux users—many running packages released as early as this year—started reporting their devices were failing to boot. Instead, they received a cryptic error message that included the phrase: “Something has gone seriously wrong.”

The cause: an update Microsoft issued as part of its monthly patch release. It was intended to close a 2-year-old vulnerability in GRUB, an open source boot loader used to start up many Linux devices. The vulnerability, with a severity rating of 8.6 out of 10, made it possible for hackers to bypass secure boot, the industry standard for ensuring that devices running Windows or other operating systems don’t load malicious firmware or software during the bootup process. CVE-2022-2601 was discovered in 2022, but for unclear reasons, Microsoft patched it only last Tuesday.

The reports indicate that multiple distributions, including Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Zorin OS, Puppy Linux, are all affected. Microsoft has yet to acknowledge the error publicly, explain how it wasn’t detected during testing, or provide technical guidance to those affected. Company representatives didn’t respond to an email seeking answers.

  • Mactan
    link
    fedilink
    433 months ago

    windows update can and will always find your dual boot eventually and break it

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      33 months ago

      I got around that by having two EFI partitions, grub linux partition is loaded always at boot and it chainloads to the Windows EFI boot partition if I choose Windows. Windows does not know another partiton exists.

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          13 months ago

          Probably, but so far so good after 7 years, only thing is I have to enrol the MOK? key in the Secure boot after major kernel updates. Which amount to typing a password at the MOK boot screen to enroll the key