Microsoft has fixed a known issue preventing Linux from booting on dual-boot systems with Secure Boot enabled after installing the August 2024 Windows security updates. Microsoft confirmed the known issue following widespread reports, saying that affected users saw "Something has gone seriously wrong: SBAT self-check failed: Security Policy Violation" errors on systems rendered unbootable. As revealed by many Linux users (running a wide range of distros, including but not limited to Ubuntu, Zorin OS, Linux Mint, and Puppy Linux), their systems stopped booting after installing the August 2024 Windows updates, and the SBAT update was incorrectly applied. While Microsoft said in the CVE-2022-2601 advisory that this SBAT update would not be delivered to devices where dual booting is detected, it also acknowledged that the dual-boot detection failed to detect some customized methods of dual-booting and applied the update anyway. This week, nine months after confirming the issue, Microsoft announced that the May 2025 Patch Tuesday security updates should fix the boot problems for all affected users. This issue is triggered by a Secure Boot Advanced Targeting (SBAT) update that blocks UEFI shim bootloaders vulnerable to exploits targeting the CVE-2022-2601 GRUB2 Secure Boot bypass.
This Cyber News was published on www.bleepingcomputer.com. Publication date: Wed, 14 May 2025 14:55:06 +0000