Live data from Hacker News

Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

cve.org

21–30 of 538 posts

Re: Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

#21
post #17

We have officially reached the logical conclusion of the feature-bloat-to-vulnerability pipeline. For nearly thirty years, notepad.exe was the gold standard for a "dumb" utility which was a simple, win32-backed buffer for strings that did exactly one thing...display text. An 8.8 CVSS on a utility meant for viewing data is a fundamental failure of the principle of least privilege. At some point, they need to stop aski…

> viewing data is a fundamental failure of the principle of least privilege. I read the cwe not cve, was wrong. It's still early in the morning...

You are mistaken:

> The malicious code would execute in the security context of the user who opened the Markdown file, giving the attacker the same permissions as that user.

Re: Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

#22
post #2

So what this means is every Windows program is now a cve nightmare (or goldmine, depending on view)?

Yeah the other day in calc.exe I pressed F7 in programmer mode to change to octal (F5 to F8 select Hex, Dec, Oct, Bin), and instead it asked if I was sure I wanted to enable caret browsing.

Re: Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

#23
post #6

I miss when the Notepad was doing what the Notepad is supposed to do: show a text file, plain and simple.

Haha, yeah.. Im using Notepad2 actually, because for LOOONG time, notepad.exe could not display LF files correctly... and Notepad2 has a bit more features, but still.. clean and lean.

Re: Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

#24
post #17

We have officially reached the logical conclusion of the feature-bloat-to-vulnerability pipeline. For nearly thirty years, notepad.exe was the gold standard for a "dumb" utility which was a simple, win32-backed buffer for strings that did exactly one thing...display text. An 8.8 CVSS on a utility meant for viewing data is a fundamental failure of the principle of least privilege. At some point, they need to stop aski…

> viewing data is a fundamental failure of the principle of least privilege. I read the cwe not cve, was wrong. It's still early in the morning...

> If I read it correctly (but could be mistaken), it runs with setuid root

I am certain you are mistaken. I couldn't find anything that hints at notepad running with elevated privileges.

Re: Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

#26
I found a copy of the win98 (I believe) notepad.exe a while back, and it works perfectly on windows 11 (though the "about notepad" dialog shows the windows 11 version for some reason??). I can write text into it, save it, and load text again. What more does notepad need? And it has a very nostalgic font too

Re: Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

#27

We have officially reached the logical conclusion of the feature-bloat-to-vulnerability pipeline. For nearly thirty years, notepad.exe was the gold standard for a "dumb" utility which was a simple, win32-backed buffer for strings that did exactly one thing...display text. An 8.8 CVSS on a utility meant for viewing data is a fundamental failure of the principle of least privilege. At some point, they need to stop aski…

[deleted]

Re: Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

#29

I found a copy of the win98 (I believe) notepad.exe a while back, and it works perfectly on windows 11 (though the "about notepad" dialog shows the windows 11 version for some reason??). I can write text into it, save it, and load text again. What more does notepad need? And it has a very nostalgic font too

It needs far more features apparently. Tons more. That's why Notepad++ is popular. Which also had a severe security vulnerability recently. Which was actively exploited by some state actor like China.

Re: Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

#30
post #15

Yeah, clicking unverified links in a markdown document to launch an executable.... Clicking unknown links is always a bad idea, but a CVE for that? I dunno....

Clicking an unknown link shouldn't result in compromise. Fortunately, MS-Windows disallows running anything not vetted by MS unless you figure out how to bypass the "SmartScreen" filter. This filter is super annoying to many a techie or gamer, but for MS-Windows refusing to run "unknown" programs is a feature, not a bug. So yes, MS will likely denounce this as not their problem and move on.

This is the same company that, back in the day, warned users to not click links in Internet Explorer. A web browser.
Post reply on HN