Live data from Hacker News

Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

cve.org

111–120 of 538 posts

Re: Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find notepad useful for sanitising clipboard content. No bold text, italics, bullet points, invisible html.. Just get the text and can copy it to paste again somewhere else. Ala Cmd+Shift+V on Mac

You can Ctrl+shift+v to paste plain text in windows.

In some cases. In others, the application does whatever it wants.

Re: Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

#112

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

How do you edit notes using Microsoft Copilot 365 for Notepad Copilot using that version?

How do you write without being able to read with that version?

Re: Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

#113

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…

"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." Well, except that this did not prevent it from having embarrassing bugs. Google "Bush hid the facts" for an example. I'm serious, you won't be disappointed. I think complexity is relative. At the time of the "Bush hid the facts" bug, nailing d…

> Now this is a solved problem

Is that so? I ran pretty often in problems with programs having trouble with non-ANSI characters

Re: Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

#114
post #48
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strictly, no. But it was a vulnerability in the design of Notepad++, key elements here being the featureset that requires frequent updates and the lack of integrity checks during the upgrade process. This has prompted me to move on from Notepad++ - it's sad, because I've used it for many years, but this is too much.

> in the design of Notepad++ One could argue it's an issue with windows where you can't just pull updates using a package manager/app store.

Recently, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the Microsoft Store has a built-in CLI with that exact functionality. You just run `store updates` to check for updates to store-managed apps, and you can target specific items with `store update `. Of course, there's also winget for non-store applications (`winget upgrade`). I find them pretty handy as I have become quite used to managing my Linux installations with pacman over the past year or so. I discovered the store CLI completely by accident. It's not widely advertised.

Re: Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

#116
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those of you on macOS who still want to benefit from arguably the best drawing application ever conceived, https://jspaint.app/ is THE way. Use it all the time when editing screenshots. Bonus point: that Windows 95 style "error" beep when pasting too large image. Always sends the shiver down the spine and confuses the coworkers around (we're an all-Mac shop).

my favorite "easter egg" hidden behind File -> Exit menu item of jspaint.app... I still remember how it blew my mind the first time I saw it!

This wet my eyes. The times...

Re: Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly my predicament. My laptop reached EOL but I'm struggling to purchase a new one. They're all bundled with AI features (I absolutely don't need) and never in my life will I buy a mac for coding. My current laptop is HODL'ing and idk if this enshittification will end soon.

Do you have a moment to talk about Linux?

Half of my software don't work on Linux. My job also depends on running PE in a legitimate (read not Wine) environment - and I don't want to spend half of my RAM running VMs.

What should I do ?

Re: Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn't agree more. A text editor exposing an attack surface via a network stack is precisely the kind of bloat that makes modern computing ultra-fragile. I actually built a "dumb" alternative in Rust last week specifically to escape this. It’s a local-only binary—no network permissions, encrypted at rest, and uses FIPS-compliant bindings (OpenSSL) just to keep the crypto boring and standard. It’s inspectable if y…

What does notepad need openssl for?

Looks like it's using it for encryption.

Re: Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

#119

> An attacker could trick a user into clicking a malicious link inside a Markdown file opened in Notepad, causing the application to launch unverified protocols that load and execute remote files. From https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-20... (there are many collapsible elements on this page, and they're also just for term definitions, sigh) What a fucking terrible page for someone unfamiliar w…

> Anyway, it's not related to CoPilot, but because Notepad makes links clickable now...

True, not related to CoPilot, but if I understand your conclusion right (which I'm not sure about), it's not _just_ that links are clickable now, it's because Notepad actually does something with the links. Otherwise it'd be a browser vulnerability, and Notepad couldn't seriously be blamed.

Re: Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

#120
post #74

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…

Unfortunately, code execution in text editors aren't a new thing. Vim had one published in 2019: https://github.com/numirias/security/blob/master/doc/2019-06... Another in 2004: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2002-1377 Neither vim nor Notepad are purely for displaying text though.

vim is a far larger program than a text editor.

notepad was always a plain text editor. It had enough problems with unicode and what that means to be "plain text".

Post reply on HN