Microsoft has officially confirmed a major bug in its recent Windows 11 24H2 updates that is causing widespread Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) crashes, displaying the stop error code “SECURE_KERNEL_ERROR” (0x18B). The issue, first reported by Windows Latest in March 2025, has now escalated following the release of the April 2025 Patch Tuesday update, affecting thousands of users globally. Microsoft has responded with urgency, deploying a Known Issue Rollback (KIR)—a server-side mechanism that remotely disables the problematic code introduced by the updates. The incident has reignited concerns about the reliability of Windows updates as the company continues to balance rapid security patching with system stability. Microsoft has also acknowledged related issues—such as Windows Hello failures—and has promised additional fixes in the upcoming May 2025 update. However, as user complaints surged after the April update, Microsoft quietly updated its support documentation to confirm the bug and began investigating its root cause. For enterprise and IT-managed environments, administrators must manually deploy a special Group Policy update to roll back the faulty code. The error points to a failure in the Secure Kernel, a critical component responsible for foundational security and virtualization operations within Windows. Microsoft is actively working on a permanent fix, which is expected to be included in a future Windows update. After installing any of these updates and rebooting, affected systems may crash with the “SECURE_KERNEL_ERROR” message, sometimes entering a persistent crash-restart loop or becoming unbootable altogether. This fix is being automatically pushed to all affected consumer and unmanaged business devices via Windows Update. Please note that it might take up to 24 hours for the resolution to propagate automatically to consumer devices,” Microsoft stated in its support documentation. When reports first surfaced in March, Microsoft did not immediately acknowledge the issue, as it appeared limited in scope. Microsoft’s rapid response via KIR has helped stem the worst of the disruption, but the incident underscores the ongoing challenges of maintaining stability in a rapidly evolving operating system landscape. Cyber Security News is a Dedicated News Platform For Cyber News, Cyber Attack News, Hacking News & Vulnerability Analysis. The relevant Group Policy can be found under Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates in the Group Policy Editor, as detailed in Microsoft’s official documentation.
This Cyber News was published on cybersecuritynews.com. Publication date: Thu, 17 Apr 2025 08:35:17 +0000