4 ms·

interesting! does that mean a windows exe could repeatedly create empty files, stuff a bunch of metadata in them, and eventually eat up all the disk space in a

• dspillett 2y ago
  > and eventually eat up all the disk space in a way that can't be fixed without re-installing windows Not quite, as the MFT can't consume all the device, so you can't fill the whole lot that way, but you could cause significant inconvenience that is not undoable without migrating to another filesystem. That migration might be possible without a reinstall as such, though it would take a lot of manual jigger-pokery (and I don't know of any tools that would help, it isn't something I expect someone has felt the need to write tools for) so the reinstall would likely be easier. > have viruses been known to exploit this?* I doubt it. If the virus is intended to extract something from the user (exfiltrating data, ransom, making them part of a bot-net, etc.) then it wants to work in the background not causing inconvenience like that (until it fires in the case of encryption & ransom, but that is a different sort of inconvenience), and if the goal of the virus is just to cause a mess then there are more effective methods of doing so.