this post was submitted on 13 May 2026
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~~Its dead simple to get write access to System Volume Information~~
~~Not even local admins have access to it. A local admin would have to take ownership of that folder (not recommended), but if a local admin is doing that for this exploit, they can just turn off Bitlocker rather than go through this nonsense.~~
I misunderstood the exploit. See replies.
By exploit standards, that's not especially hard. I don't think there's really anything blocking accessing it at all if an NTFS volume is mounted on a typical desktop Linux distro, as it's just NTFS permissions blocking it, and they're not typically obeyed by Linux in the first place.
In the face of your edit, I see that you've misunderstood the exploit. You need write access to the System Volume Information directory of your own USB stick, not anything on the target machine. It's much easier to get access to things on a computer than it is to get access on one particular computer, and this exploit lets you jump from one to the other.
Its bitlocker encrypted. You need to unlock the disk to see System Volume Information in Linux.
I'll copy the bit here that I just edited into my reply after you edited the first post:
Ah yeah, I misunderstood. Thanks for the clarification.
does bitlocker encrypt whole volume, or userdata folders? It's a performance issue to encrypt anything that doesn't need to be.
You can do full disk or folders
Its whole-volume encryption, not file encryption. Most modern CPUs have built-in AES-NI instructions so its not much of a performance penalty (as long as AES is used for encryption).
Your strike-through didn't work somehow.
I know! I cant figure it out 😂
It's the spaces, I think
I tried without spaces too unfortunately
I think it's three tildas.
Its two. It didn't like the exclamation mark. I removed it and it started working.
Oh nice work!