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Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

cve.org

171–180 of 538 posts

Re: Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

#171
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow that's a hit of nostalgia, I'd completely forgotten about metapad, but I loved it back in the day. And it's hard to believe now, but yes, support for Ctrl+S to save file was a notable feature because notepad itself didn't support that back then.

Oh wow, yes I remember now, I used to type `Alt+F` and then `S` immediately because Notepad didn't support `Ctrl+S` back then. Thanks for giving me nostalgia!

I've still got the very fast muscle memory of "Alt-F S", I used to do it habitually in Word and Excel. Still do it occasionally, then having to then undo whatever it does now (luckily it's usually nothing), but sometimes it leaves the Alt press 'open' so the next letter I press does something unpredictable.

Re: Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But can it play MP3s?

I'm sure eventually it will, it's law: Every text editor, if it survives long enough, will end up implementing a partial, bug-ridden version of Emacs.

> Every text editor, if it survives long enough, will end up implementing a partial, bug-ridden version of Emacs.

Every text editor, including Emacs [...].

Re: Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

#173

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…

EDIT: THE OLD NOTEPAD IS STILL IN WINDOWS AND WE CAN USE IT! https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/3845356/... You basically have to find the "execution alias" setting and disable notepad and you get the ole reliable :D OLD POST: This has hurt me specifically. Since I work without IDEs, no VIM, no vs code. On linux I use nano, on windows I use Notepad. I like the minimalism and the fact that I have abso…

> This has hurt me specifically. Since I work without IDEs, no VIM, no vs code. On linux I use nano, on windows I use Notepad. I like the minimalism and the fact that I have absolute control, and that I can work on any machine without needing to introduce an external install.

What's your day job? Are you self employed?

Re: Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

#174
post #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.

One of the last straws that got me to migrate to Linux was how long it would take for calc.exe to open in Windows 10. Even on much older computers and much older version of Windows it was instant. Suddenly in the mid-2010's the calculator is so bloated you have to wait a few seconds for it to load? Fuck off.

It didn't always take a long time to load, but often enough that it was noticeable and 'worrisome' for the future of Windows.

Re: Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

#175

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…

There is a difference between a bug you laugh at and walk away and a bug a scammer laughs at as he walks away with your money.

When I open something in Notepad, I don't expect it to be a possible attack vector for installing ransomware on my machine. I expect it to be text. It being displayed incorrectly is supposed to be the worst thing that could happen. There should be no reason to make Notepad capable of recognizing links, let alone opening them. Save that crap for VS Code or some other app I already know not to trust.

Re: Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

#176
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Fine" Why does every Linux distro under the sun try so hard to protect the garbage under /usr/bin/ and /etc/ when literally the only files that matter to me are in /home, which is a free-for-all?

The first point is fairly obvious and the latter point is not true (AppArmor etc)

Phew, I'm so relieved that now we have the One True Security Solution To Rule Them All, AppArmor.

Oh, what do you mean there's also SELinux, Snap, Flatpack, Docker, Podman, ...?

Re: Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

#177
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I somewhat regularly use the almost embarrassing key sequence Ctrl-C Ctrl-L Ctrl-V Ctrl-A Ctrl-X to sanitize text I’ve copied from a browser, using the address field to remove any formatting.

I do a similar thing but use the start menu search, Ctrl-C, WIN, Ctrl-V, Ctrl-A, Ctrl-X. You can do it all in one hand and can get really fast, assuming the start menu doesn't lag behind. There's also the downside that it publishes all of your clipboard content to Bing search so maintain vigilance for confidential data...

Have you tired using the run action instead to clean the data? Win+r

Re: Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Win9x Notepad in particular can only load files up to 64KB in size (edit: and supports only ANSI encoding, no Unicode). There were some actually useful additions to it up until Windows 10 or so - for example being able to handle LF (in addition to CRLF) line endings. But yeah, everything added in Windows 11 is just pure bloat.

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

I always used browser address bar for that. But giving it a second thought, I uploaded the data to Google servers.

Re: Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

#179
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I somewhat regularly use the almost embarrassing key sequence Ctrl-C Ctrl-L Ctrl-V Ctrl-A Ctrl-X to sanitize text I’ve copied from a browser, using the address field to remove any formatting.

I explicitly stopped this habit so that I don't accidentally do it with sensitive data I don't want to go to my search engine provider's auto complete API.

Disabling remote search autocomplete is one of the first things I do when I setup a new browser instance. It's a privacy and security nightmare I don't want.

Re: Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Fine" Why does every Linux distro under the sun try so hard to protect the garbage under /usr/bin/ and /etc/ when literally the only files that matter to me are in /home, which is a free-for-all?

>Why does every Linux distro under the sun try so hard to protect the garbage under /usr/bin/ and /etc Because a compromised user could infect shared executables and spread the infection. A bit harder to do with etc but for sure possible. The main target would be infecting bash and you are done from the get go. >when literally the only files that matter to me are in /home, which is a free-for-all? The home folder's r…

> when literally the only files that matter to me are in /home, which is a free-for-all?

> The home folder's read write is usually restricted to the user.

Yeah, and that is the point. All user's programs including curl, wget, the web browser, anything else that connects to the network run as the user, and all the user's programs, by default, have access to everything inside ${HOME}.

Most people don't really care if /bin gets obliterated, but they do care dearly when /home/joe/photos/annies-2nd-birthday gets wiped.

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