Last Tuesday, loads of Linux users-many running packages released as early as this year-started reporting their devices were failing to boot. Instead, they received a cryptic error message that included the phrase: "Something has gone seriously wrong." The cause: an update Microsoft issued as part of its monthly patch release. It was intended to close a 2-year-old vulnerability in GRUB, an open source boot loader used to start up many Linux devices.
Tuesday's update left dual-boot devices-meaning those configured to run both Windows and Linux-no longer able to boot into the latter when Secure Boot was enforced. When users tried to load Linux, they received the message: "Verifying shim SBAT data failed: Security Policy Violation. Something has gone seriously wrong: SBAT self-check failed: Security Policy Violation." Almost immediately support and discussion forums lit up with reports of the failure.
Note that Windows says this update won't apply to systems that dual-boot Windows and Linux. This obviously isn't true, and likely depends on your system configuration and the distribution being run. It appears to have made some Linux EFI shim bootloaders incompatible with microcrap EFI bootloaders.
The reports indicate that multiple distributions, including Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Zorin OS, Puppy Linux, are all affected.
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