More than four years after the last release, the NTFS-3G 2021.8.22 package has been published, which includes a free driver that operates in user space using the FUSE mechanism, along with a set of utilities, ntfsprogs, for managing NTFS partitions. The project code is distributed under the GPLv2 license.
The driver supports reading and writing data on NTFS partitions and can operate on a wide range of operating systems that support FUSE, including Linux, Android, macOS, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, QNX, and Haiku. The implementation of the NTFS file system provided by the driver is fully compatible with the Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10 operating systems. The ntfsprogs utility set allows for operations such as creating NTFS partitions, integrity checks, cloning, resizing, and recovering deleted files. Common components for working with NTFS used in the driver and utilities are moved to a separate library.
This release is notable for fixing 21 vulnerabilities. The vulnerabilities are caused by buffer overflows when processing various metadata and allow for code execution when mounting a specially crafted NTFS image (the attack can even be executed when connecting an untrusted external drive). If the attacker has local access to a system where the ntfs-3g executable is installed with the setuid root flag, these vulnerabilities can also be exploited to escalate privileges.
Among the non-security-related changes, the merger of the code bases for the extended and stable versions of NTFS-3G is highlighted, along with the move of the project development to GitHub. The new release also includes fixes for accumulated bugs and resolves issues with compilation using older versions of libfuse. Additionally, the developers conducted an analysis of the complaints regarding the low performance of NTFS-3G. The analysis revealed that performance issues are usually linked to the delivery of outdated versions of the project in distributions or the use of incorrect default settings (mounting without the 'big_writes' option, which reduces file transfer speed by 3-4 times). According to tests conducted by the development team, NTFS-3G's performance lags behind ext4 by only 15-20%.
Source: opennet.ru
