An unofficial third-party solution for the Windows 10 NTFS string-crash bug has been revealed by a software development company specializing in Microsoft and Windows products.

The bug fix reduces the chance that an attacker or scammer can abuse the vulnerability, though it does depend on installing an open-source fix to do so.

Fixing the NTFS Bug

In mid-January 2021, a Windows 10 bug surfaced that would cause a system to crash and mark your active hard drive as corrupt.

The vulnerability is triggered by simply looking at a particular string of text, numbers, and symbols anywhere on the system. If someone sends you a file using the specific string as the filename, it triggers the bug the moment you look at the file.

In turn, the bug marks your active storage as "dirty," displaying a false storage corruption issue containing an error message requiring you to "Restart to repair drive errors." When you restart your computer to "fix" the error, the Windows CHKDSK system utility whirs into action and fixes the issue—most of the time.

Now, the team at OSR, a leading software development company specializing in Windows internals, has released an open-source driver that will prevent anyone abusing the NTFS bug before Microsoft releases its official fix.

We also have a system here at OSR that will no longer boot after running a second chkdsk while playing with this. Between the ugly warning and the broken system here we think it's worth mitigating until there's a real fix released.

The OSR Developers Blog details the driver update, explaining that "There's no way to fix this problem without an update to Windows."

In the meantime, the OSR filter driver will monitor any attempts to access or look at a file containing the specific string, filtering the "$.i30" trigger.

Related: Microsoft Is Fixing a Windows 10 Exploit That Attacks When You Look at It

How to Install the OSR NTFS Filter Driver

You can download and install the filter drive from the project's GitHub page.

Download the file and extract the contents to a new folder. Press CTRL + Shift + right-click, then select Open command window here. Now, run the following commands to install the driver:

        RUNDLL32.EXE SETUPAPI.DLL,InstallHinfSection DefaultInstall 132 .\i30flt.inf

wevtutil im i30flt.man

fltmc load i30flt

When you want to remove the filter driver (after Microsoft releases its patch), run the following command from an elevated Command Prompt:

        RUNDLL32.EXE SETUPAPI.DLL,InstallHinfSection DefaultUninstall 132 .\i30flt.inf
    

As yet, there is no set date for an official patch. Microsoft is working on fixing the vulnerability permanently. For the time being, the OSR NTFS filter driver patch can keep your system safe from the exploit.