More like from the 1970s
The fundamental problem here is that a container for internal state for NTFS appears as a file in the file name space.
The ODS-2 Files-11 file system format used by VMS (a development of the earlier RSX-11 ODS-1 format) had exactly the same conceptual mistake, with dellghts like BADBLK.SYS and INDEXF.SYS in the root directory. Indeed, INDEXF.SYS is the analogue of $MFT. It's not surprising that NTFS continues this, because ODS-1 and ODS-1 are said to have been designed by Dave Cutler, who Microsoft hired as the NT team leader.
It's disappointing, though, that no lessons were learned. Perhaps memory is playing tricks on me after 30 years, but this locking exploit sounds awfully familiar to me from the days when my job required passing an eye over VMS security updates before we applied them. At the very least, a good "second system" design should have cleared this cruft away.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
