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Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

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Re: Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

#421

Post by numpad0 »

Fiveplus wrote: post #14

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…

> At some point, they need to stop asking "can we add this feature?" and start asking "does this text editor need a network-aware rendering stack?"

Everyone has to prove their worth by involving more people in ever embiggening trainwrecks every quarters in this day and age just to maintain employment, and without tangibly threatening anyone else's while at it. That's where the features are coming from. That's what needs to be fixed. Which also goes way beyond engineering.

Re: Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

#422

Post by Zenul_Abidin »

tracker1 wrote: post #369
Hackbraten wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unpopular opinion: rudimentary Markdown support is not entirely far-fetched even for a dumb text editor. Even though I’m all against feature bloat, I think that making Markdown hyperlinks clickable is still within the Overton window of what a simple editor should be doing.

Just... no... not notepad.. Notepad should be the single-simplest of text editors, always has been, always should be... it should be "safe" much like "task manager" it should be as simple and bulletproof as any application in Windows are... these are essential tools that should never, ever, ever break. MS has WordPad... f ck around with that to make it support markdown or whatever else beyond rtf you want it to suppo…

Old notepad is still there, it's just in System32 and you have to disable app execution alias for notepad.exe (apps > advanced app settings > app execution aliases)

Re: Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

#423

Post by hulitu »

nottorp wrote: post #195
Hackbraten wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unpopular opinion: rudimentary Markdown support is not entirely far-fetched even for a dumb text editor. Even though I’m all against feature bloat, I think that making Markdown hyperlinks clickable is still within the Overton window of what a simple editor should be doing.

Except notepad was the safe option for editing files and making sure what you see is what gets saved. Not any more?

Not. They want it to be Notepad + Wordpad and, in the future, Wordstar.

Re: Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

#424

Post by delusional »

samspot wrote: post #408
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is to do with link handling: Notepad? Link handling? That's like my pencil having a CVE that's to do with how it loads the ink. That old saying about 'if Microsoft built a car' is more true now than it was then: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/car-balk/

It's hard for me to imagine anyone balking at this feature. My core note taking workflow frequently involves: 1. Note about blah 2. Paste link to blah 3. Open that link later when reviewing my notes. Blah is sometimes a web link, sometimes a link to a doc on my system, and sometimes a link to an item in my todo tracker. The better analogy is this is like a pencil having an eraser built in. I use Drafts instead of Not…

But then notepad wouldn't be fetching the content. While I would still prefer notepad to be simple, and just making you copy paste the link, I would expect it to forward a link a browser, or something. I would not expect notepad to go out and fetch random content from the internet.

Re: Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

#425

Post by Zenul_Abidin »

thwarted wrote: post #389
electroly wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe it is. Just tested it. You can make the link "C:\windows\system32\cmd.exe" and clicking it will launch the Command Prompt. I noticed you can't make it "C:\windows\system32\cmd.exe /c some-nefarious-thing"; it doesn't like the space. Exploiting may require you to ship both the malicious EXE and the MD, then trick the user into clicking the link inside the MD. But then you could have just tricked them into di…

What if the space is url encoded %20 ?

That wouldn't work because Windows doesn't understand url-encoded sequences.

Re: Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

#426

Post by omoikane »

dgxyz wrote: post #46
mdavid626 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I extracted out notepad.exe, calc.exe and mspaint.exe from Windows 7. I use them on Windows 11. They work perfectly.

Might as well just use Windows 7 if the security surface is this bad on later windows.

Windows 7 market share was actually growing for a while according to:

https://gs.statcounter.com/windows-version-market-share/desk...

Not sure what caused the inflection point in December 2025.

Re: Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

#427

Post by alternatex »

tracker1 wrote: post #369
Hackbraten wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unpopular opinion: rudimentary Markdown support is not entirely far-fetched even for a dumb text editor. Even though I’m all against feature bloat, I think that making Markdown hyperlinks clickable is still within the Overton window of what a simple editor should be doing.

Just... no... not notepad.. Notepad should be the single-simplest of text editors, always has been, always should be... it should be "safe" much like "task manager" it should be as simple and bulletproof as any application in Windows are... these are essential tools that should never, ever, ever break. MS has WordPad... f ck around with that to make it support markdown or whatever else beyond rtf you want it to suppo…

WordPad was discontinued.

Re: Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

#428

Post by Zenul_Abidin »

r2vcap wrote: post #37

A few days ago, Notepad++ got compromised—apparently by a state actor (or a proxy). And now, today, Windows’ built-in Notepad has a fresh CVE. What a life. At this point, what am I supposed to do other than uninstall Windows completely? No real sandboxing, a mountain of legacy…

It was not compromised a few days ago, that's just when the attack was disclosed. The actual compromise and exploitation happened months ago for several weeks.

Re: Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

#429

Post by Zenul_Abidin »

oblio wrote: post #395
TZubiri wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just make another user bro. If you can't even create a user to run a program you distrust, the issue is not that windows doesn't provide sandboxes, it's that you don't use them And no, it's not "a lot of work" it's the bare minimum

Yet 99% of the planet doesn't do "the bare minimum", bro. We have supposedly all the smartest minds in the world working in tech and they haven't been able to create a simple, cheap, reliable cross platform solution for user data protection, backup and restore. It's easier to blame users instead.

I rolled out a home-made backup script in Powershell - just a wrapper around wbadmin that backs up an entire system image and the a standard "Backup and Restore" backup on an external disk once I plugged it in.

I even signed it and everything.

Re: Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

#430

Post by layer8 »

voidUpdate wrote: post #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

Windows 11 still includes the old notepad.exe in its Windows directory [0]. Windows just “helpfully” redirects it to the new app if you try to run it. You have to turn that off in Settings under “App execution aliases”. Then you get the old Notepad.

[0] In the unlikely case that it isn’t there, you can add it through System > Optional Features > Add an optional feature.

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