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 asking "can we add this feature?" and start asking "does this text editor need a network-aware rendering stack?"
"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 down Unicode and text encodings was still considered rocket science. Now this is a solved problem and we have other battles we fight.
To be honest, the 'bush hid the facts' bug was funny and was not really a vulnerability that could be exploited, unless... you understood Chinese and the alternative text would manage to pursuade you to do something harmful.
In fact, those were the good days, when a mere affair with your secretary would be enough to jeopardize your career. The pendulum couldn't have swung more since.
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.
Oh it's an encrypted at rest notepad. The idea was to apply NIST 800-53 and FIPS 140-3 to the smallest possible app where a selection of controls could make sense.
It only uses OpenSSL-FIPS variant on Linux for the crypt. On Macos and Windows, it uses OS FIPS primitives for it.
I'm not sure if we should use "gold standard" together with the little piece of garbage that notepad.exe was for most of its existence. It has been the bane for anyone who had to do work on locked down Windows servers and had to, e.g., edit files with modern encodings. They fixed some of it in the meantime, but the bitter taste remains.
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.
Last couple of years notepad started getting more features, but I'm very practical so I just ignored them, logged out of my account when necessary, opted out of features in settings, whatever.
But now this moment feels like I must change something, we need a traditional notepad.exe or just copy it from a previous version, I'll try adding NOTEPAD.exe to a thumb drive and having that. But it's a shame that it breaks the purity of "working with what's installed".
> 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.
People very often run notepad as administrator (anything launched from administrative powershell instances will run like this).
In fact, if you enabled developer mode on your computer there's a registry key that gets set to run notepad as admin, it's: `runas /savecred /user:PC-NAME\Administrator “notepad %1”` in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT-> * -> shell -> runas (new folder) -> (Default)
And, if I'm not totally mistaken, notepad also has the ability to reopen files as administrator, but I don't remember how to invoke it.
Regardless, notepad is a very trusted application and is often run as Administrator. Often it's more trusted than any other utility to modify system files.
A utility meant for viewing data? I don't think you understand what a text editor is.
I'd agree that recent features feel a bit unnecessary, but it does need to edit and write files - including system ones (going through however that is authorised). You could sandbox a lot of apps with limited impact, but it would make a text editor really useless. Least privilege principles work best when you don't need many privileges.
I’m not sure I understand what you’re trying to say. You could always edit system files with notepad, that was something that the program always excelled at thanks to its simplicity in both how it looked and behaved. And i fail to see the new features as anything but useless bloat.
> 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.
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
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.
And funnily enough, Office for Mac doesn’t allow you to do this, or at least it didn’t used to. I think I may’ve just noticed that it’s started working.
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.
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...
Notepad is so slow at loading large files that it crashing quickly is a feature.
The windows 7-10 versions that could open anything would just get stuck for half an hour when you opened the wrong thing in them, which was rather annoying.
Yep. Back when I used to teach Windows programming in C commercially, the course exercise was to replicate notepad. It was surprising how many of its features you could implement in a week-long course, especially as many of our clients were no great shakes at C.
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).
I have the mspaint.exe from the same version too :P. It complains about registry stuff on launch but other than that it works fine. There's no spray can in the modern paint!
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.
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.
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 <update-id>`. 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.
You can if you use the windows store. It's just that you usually install things outside of that, unlike in linuxes where you generally use the package manager that can handle updates for you
The OS provided option can be bare bones, stable, secure and just utilitarian. This promotes having people choose their own tools for the features they want and not really expecting much other than reliability from the OS version. They didn’t need to mess with a good thing.
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…
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 read write is usually restricted to the user. The only scenario where this isn't the case to my knowledge is Ubuntu where others can read it, but this is just a huge flaw in Ubuntu that almost no other distro has.
- Windows Sandbox (consumer-level sandbox)
- Creating a separate User (User folders are permission locked to their user by default, system binaries cannot be modified without admin access)
- HyperV (VM hypervisor)
- Edge Browsers
Don't get me wrong MSFT quality is dropping steeply, but this is still a strong point. For comparision, on Ubuntu, user folder by default can be read by all users.
"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."
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.
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!
It looks like, after Microsoft discontinued WordPad, they want to implement more features into Notepad. If you want simple plain text editor you have to use msedit[1].
You can still open the real notepad, you just have to turn off a "feature" that makes running notepad.exe open the new notepad. Its called "execution alias" or something like that.
i imagine it’s probably something to do with the massive scope creep recently, especially with AI and the Markdown features - they’ve tried to fit some of WordPad’s rich text features following its removal
> 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.
What a fucking terrible page for someone unfamiliar with the site. the "Learn More" links will allow you to learn what the terms "CWE", "CVSS", "Product Status" mean, but not to learn more about this vulnerability...
Anyway, it's not related to CoPilot, but because Notepad makes links clickable now...
> 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.
It's in fact the opposite. Browsers show a popup that asks if you really intended to click a link with a non http/https handler, notepad does not.
The actual RCE here would be in some other application that registers a URL handler. Java used to ship one that was literally designed to run arbitrary code.
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.
Oof. That's a special kind of stupid. I get how it happened, but like, they found a way to make calc bad while also bringing an obscure feature in modern browsers I hate with a passion.
It reminds me of King of the Hill where Hank says "Can't you see you're not making Christianity better and you're only making rock music worse?"
I'm frankly amazed that the majority of new laptops still come with Microsoft Windows.
To be fair, over the years there have been sincere efforts to re-architect the OS with a security, privacy, reliability for peristent storage, graphics, multi-tasking, multi-user, networking etc. But those efforts never caught up with the speed at which bloat was added.
At the heart, its design still has remnants that have the naivety of a stand-alone, stateless microcomputer that boots straight off a floppy after BIOS POST.
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.
Yeah it sucks. Got an MBP here which was my refuge from Windows. That's gone to hell too.
I am moving off onto an old desktop running Debian stable slowly as I don't really need a laptop. This also isolates me from a number of geopolitical and technology creep and lock-in related risks I have identified.
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.
One day I'm trying a modified Windows (bloat stripped) from team-os. And the difference is night and day. My old laptop finally can run Windows 10!
I wonder though if there are more open and trusted modified Windows being developed out there because trying random modified Windows in team-os is not getting me some confidence
I had that problem about 20 years ago. I changed the job. I know that's an extreme position but to be tied to a steaming pile of crap is a career risk. I've seen people go down with ships in that way before and it scared me.
As much as I used to love Sublime, the version switching caught me out which burned me a bit, even if admittedly my v2 key lasted an unreasonable time through the version 3 beta, but I don't want to risk buying a v4 key without a clear roadmap of when they might switch to version 5.
I can definitely vouch for this! I've been using it for many years and it's been essentially the same the whole time: fast, lean and working on all operating systems.
Up next: forgotten Piet[1] autorun feature discovered in MS Paint. Customers complain after removal, insist they have existing legacy applications depending on it.
My assumption here is that if the link is web link it will open that link in web browser but Windows (and other OSes) have custom URL handlers that open whatever app is registered for that URL and that app may have issues that causes it to download and run arbitrary code.
What other markdown viewers or editors support URL schemes that just execute code? And not in a browser sandbox but in the same security context notepad itself is running in.
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.
Even if you want to Notepad have clickable links, maybe not allow it to blindly allow every URL scheme known to man. It seems reasonable to limit it to do http/https and MAYBE mailto.
I want to complain about the terminology used. It is probably just me, but RCE implies no user action required. It is a stupid, bad error yes, but because it requires the user to load a payload file and click on a link I would not really categorize it as a "remote" code execution type vulnerability.
But yeah, pedantic terminology aside, what a stupid stupid error. In notepad, of all things, reading text files should be safe. It reminds me of the WMF failure. "No you can't get a virus from playing a video" is what I would tell people. And then microsoft in their infinite wisdom said "Herp Derp, why don't we package the executable video decoder right in the video file. It will make searching for a codec a thing of the past" Sigh, smooth move microsoft, thanks for making a liar out of me.
Well, it might be "more secure" in the sense of "no hacker will use it as an attack vector", not necessarily "it is free of security of security bugs".
I 100% agree. I'm just trying to point out the problem isn't Microsoft AI slopping their software. Even if you slopped it, the software could turn out better than what they're putting out.
There must be something much worse than slop going on to get to this point.
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 asking "can we add this feature?" and start asking "does this text editor need a network-aware rendering stack?"
"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 down Unicode and text encodings was still considered rocket science. Now this is a solved problem and we have other battles we fight.
To be honest, the 'bush hid the facts' bug was funny and was not really a vulnerability that could be exploited, unless... you understood Chinese and the alternative text would manage to pursuade you to do something harmful.
In fact, those were the good days, when a mere affair with your secretary would be enough to jeopardize your career. The pendulum couldn't have swung more since.
Embarrassing bugs are not RCEs. Also the industry should be more mature now, not less. But move fast and break things, I guess...
We have reached peak software stability, it's all gonna be downhill from here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_hid_the_facts
I am pretty sure it's possible to fix that entire category of bugs without introducing RCE vulnerabilities.
Fascinating reading about that bug, thanks for sharing
> Now this is a solved problem
Is that so? I ran pretty often in problems with programs having trouble with non-ANSI characters
It's not solved, we just don't have to guess the encoding any more because it's always UTF-8.
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 you want to check the crate: https://github.com/BrowserBox/FIPSPad
What does notepad need openssl for?
Oh it's an encrypted at rest notepad. The idea was to apply NIST 800-53 and FIPS 140-3 to the smallest possible app where a selection of controls could make sense.
It only uses OpenSSL-FIPS variant on Linux for the crypt. On Macos and Windows, it uses OS FIPS primitives for it.
For the built-in web-browser instance it likely contains by now.
Ability to handle email coming soon.
But can it play MP3s?
Looks like it's using it for encryption.
Cryptography I guess
Question is, did they even realize they added a network-aware rendering stack...
Is it giving MS too much credit to suggest that they probably didn't just vibe code their new notepad?
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".
I'm not sure if we should use "gold standard" together with the little piece of garbage that notepad.exe was for most of its existence. It has been the bane for anyone who had to do work on locked down Windows servers and had to, e.g., edit files with modern encodings. They fixed some of it in the meantime, but the bitter taste remains.
They should have called it Emacs. Then everybody would have known.
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.
Last couple of years notepad started getting more features, but I'm very practical so I just ignored them, logged out of my account when necessary, opted out of features in settings, whatever.
But now this moment feels like I must change something, we need a traditional notepad.exe or just copy it from a previous version, I'll try adding NOTEPAD.exe to a thumb drive and having that. But it's a shame that it breaks the purity of "working with what's installed".
EDIT.COM still works in dosbox
> 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.
> 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.
People very often run notepad as administrator (anything launched from administrative powershell instances will run like this).
In fact, if you enabled developer mode on your computer there's a registry key that gets set to run notepad as admin, it's: `runas /savecred /user:PC-NAME\Administrator “notepad %1”` in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT-> * -> shell -> runas (new folder) -> (Default)
And, if I'm not totally mistaken, notepad also has the ability to reopen files as administrator, but I don't remember how to invoke it.
Regardless, notepad is a very trusted application and is often run as Administrator. Often it's more trusted than any other utility to modify system files.
> And, if I'm not totally mistaken, notepad also has the ability to reopen files as administrator, but I don't remember how to invoke it.
I think that's a notepad plus plus feature. I had it offer to reopen itself as administrator when editing system files like HOSTS.
tell this to level N-1 managers that want to get promoted by the only way of "launching features"
A utility meant for viewing data? I don't think you understand what a text editor is.
I'd agree that recent features feel a bit unnecessary, but it does need to edit and write files - including system ones (going through however that is authorised). You could sandbox a lot of apps with limited impact, but it would make a text editor really useless. Least privilege principles work best when you don't need many privileges.
I’m not sure I understand what you’re trying to say. You could always edit system files with notepad, that was something that the program always excelled at thanks to its simplicity in both how it looked and behaved. And i fail to see the new features as anything but useless bloat.
I feel like the process of carving out any meaning out of "QA" is complete. It's cathartic, in its twisted way...
It is to do with link handling:
https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-20...
> 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.
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
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
You can Ctrl+shift+v to paste plain text in windows.
In some cases. In others, the application does whatever it wants.
And funnily enough, Office for Mac doesn’t allow you to do this, or at least it didn’t used to. I think I may’ve just noticed that it’s started working.
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.
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...
Notepad is so slow at loading large files that it crashing quickly is a feature.
The windows 7-10 versions that could open anything would just get stuck for half an hour when you opened the wrong thing in them, which was rather annoying.
The reason being it is a plain text edit component, with a window around it, hence the limitation.
Yep. Back when I used to teach Windows programming in C commercially, the course exercise was to replicate notepad. It was surprising how many of its features you could implement in a week-long course, especially as many of our clients were no great shakes at C.
> (though the "about notepad" dialog shows the windows 11 version for some reason??)
It's because the program just calls a Windows API to display the version dialog of Windows itself.
Specifically, ShellAbout: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/shellapi...
I extracted out notepad.exe, calc.exe and mspaint.exe from Windows 7. I use them on Windows 11. They work perfectly.
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...
Might as well just use Windows 7 if the security surface is this bad on later windows.
I have the mspaint.exe from the same version too :P. It complains about registry stuff on launch but other than that it works fine. There's no spray can in the modern paint!
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?
you can also just uninstall the "new" notepad, at which point Windows will let you run the old one again (which is still shipped!).
By using a version that is _that_ old you do lose out on some of the actually useful updates legacy nodepad received, such as LF line ending support.
What? Did they accidentally revert the improvements they already made to previously shipped versions of the old notepad program?
> What more does notepad need?
Most of the features that were added in later versions: unicode, tabs, auto-reload, support for large files. CTRL+S is also nice.
I feel vindicated by reverting to the old windows 10 notepad.exe
Support for Unix line endings at the very least.
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.
That recent Notepad++ incident was a supply chain attack, not a vulnerability in the original program.
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 <update-id>`. 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.
I'm not sure who I trust less to handle package integrity, the 3rd party hosting provider that Notepad++ used, or Microsoft.
A little tongue-in-cheek, but it's also an issue with windows, that it's owned by an untrustworthy company.
You can if you use the windows store. It's just that you usually install things outside of that, unlike in linuxes where you generally use the package manager that can handle updates for you
Pretty sure winget does let you do that.
The OS provided option can be bare bones, stable, secure and just utilitarian. This promotes having people choose their own tools for the features they want and not really expecting much other than reliability from the OS version. They didn’t need to mess with a good thing.
Ok, tabs, I do like the tabs.
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…
Well technically Unixes like Linux are a mountain of legacy and they are fine.
Windows is just a mountain of shit.
"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 read write is usually restricted to the user. The only scenario where this isn't the case to my knowledge is Ubuntu where others can read it, but this is just a huge flaw in Ubuntu that almost no other distro has.
The first point is fairly obvious and the latter point is not true (AppArmor etc)
Unixes like Linux are not immune.
True, as systemd and wayland point out elegantly. But at least there is a modicum of choice there.
>No real sandboxing, a mountain of legacy…
You have:
- Windows Sandbox (consumer-level sandbox) - Creating a separate User (User folders are permission locked to their user by default, system binaries cannot be modified without admin access) - HyperV (VM hypervisor) - Edge Browsers
Don't get me wrong MSFT quality is dropping steeply, but this is still a strong point. For comparision, on Ubuntu, user folder by default can be read by all users.
we still need a mouse icon rce until we reach peak
"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."
I didn't even know Notepad would render Markdown.
I think it's very recent, I use it almost daily and only last week did I see a markdown file being rendered.
Torture will continue until morale improves
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.
This was already better when the latest from MS was still called "* XP":
https://liquidninja.com/metapad/
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 used to overwrite c:\windows\notepad.exe with Metapad. At some point Windows security made this a pain though!
It looks like, after Microsoft discontinued WordPad, they want to implement more features into Notepad. If you want simple plain text editor you have to use msedit[1].
[1]https://github.com/microsoft/edit
You can still open the real notepad, you just have to turn off a "feature" that makes running notepad.exe open the new notepad. Its called "execution alias" or something like that.
i imagine it’s probably something to do with the massive scope creep recently, especially with AI and the Markdown features - they’ve tried to fit some of WordPad’s rich text features following its removal
I used notepad as my default, simple text editor for ages.
After they added copilot I finally gave up and uninstalled it and switched to a one of the minimalistic clones of the good old notepad.exe
> 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 with the site. the "Learn More" links will allow you to learn what the terms "CWE", "CVSS", "Product Status" mean, but not to learn more about this vulnerability...
Anyway, it's not related to CoPilot, but because Notepad makes links clickable now...
> 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.
It's in fact the opposite. Browsers show a popup that asks if you really intended to click a link with a non http/https handler, notepad does not.
The actual RCE here would be in some other application that registers a URL handler. Java used to ship one that was literally designed to run arbitrary code.
They could've just implemented it in webview2 with all the AI features they want.
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.
I've found calc's currency converter feature frightening.
Oof. That's a special kind of stupid. I get how it happened, but like, they found a way to make calc bad while also bringing an obscure feature in modern browsers I hate with a passion.
It reminds me of King of the Hill where Hank says "Can't you see you're not making Christianity better and you're only making rock music worse?"
Always has been.
Notepad had one job... Seems like bringing markdown features killed it :)
We got notepad.exe RCE before GTA 6
8.8 RCE CVE in notepad.exe. Well done microslop
> Product
> Windows Notepad
Disambiguation urgently needed.
I'm frankly amazed that the majority of new laptops still come with Microsoft Windows.
To be fair, over the years there have been sincere efforts to re-architect the OS with a security, privacy, reliability for peristent storage, graphics, multi-tasking, multi-user, networking etc. But those efforts never caught up with the speed at which bloat was added.
At the heart, its design still has remnants that have the naivety of a stand-alone, stateless microcomputer that boots straight off a floppy after BIOS POST.
Seems whatever they do they step in shit. They should stop doing stuff.
They spent the last few years entirely compromising their products rather than improving them.
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.
Yeah it sucks. Got an MBP here which was my refuge from Windows. That's gone to hell too.
I am moving off onto an old desktop running Debian stable slowly as I don't really need a laptop. This also isolates me from a number of geopolitical and technology creep and lock-in related risks I have identified.
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 ?
One day I'm trying a modified Windows (bloat stripped) from team-os. And the difference is night and day. My old laptop finally can run Windows 10!
I wonder though if there are more open and trusted modified Windows being developed out there because trying random modified Windows in team-os is not getting me some confidence
I had that problem about 20 years ago. I changed the job. I know that's an extreme position but to be tied to a steaming pile of crap is a career risk. I've seen people go down with ships in that way before and it scared me.
Install Linux
use SublimeText, it is perhaps faster now than the stock Notepad
As much as I used to love Sublime, the version switching caught me out which burned me a bit, even if admittedly my v2 key lasted an unreasonable time through the version 3 beta, but I don't want to risk buying a v4 key without a clear roadmap of when they might switch to version 5.
I can definitely vouch for this! I've been using it for many years and it's been essentially the same the whole time: fast, lean and working on all operating systems.
Combined with LSP I find it to be quite a good IDE too. Handles extremely large source trees quite well.
I'd now like to see a RCE in MS Paint or Calculator, if the exploit finder is reading this.
Up next: forgotten Piet[1] autorun feature discovered in MS Paint. Customers complain after removal, insist they have existing legacy applications depending on it.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esoteric_programming_language#...
Good job!
So notepad now renders links, then when clicks execute the code on those links (not just loading a website in a browser for example)?
My assumption here is that if the link is web link it will open that link in web browser but Windows (and other OSes) have custom URL handlers that open whatever app is registered for that URL and that app may have issues that causes it to download and run arbitrary code.
Just now Notepad integrates very useful copilot assistant... What can go wrong
To be fair this has more to do with Markdown than anything else.
Although I approve of neither feature. notepad should stick with what it does well.
use linux
What AI great job!
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....
What other markdown viewers or editors support URL schemes that just execute code? And not in a browser sandbox but in the same security context notepad itself is running in.
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.
Funny that since the IE engine was plastered all over the place. Only 98lite could avoid it.
Notepad was the epitome of a single, well functioning app in Windows for the last eternity of two.
Rewriting it to integrate AI and some bells and whistles recklessly and having a CVE is tragicomic if you ask me.
Even if you want to Notepad have clickable links, maybe not allow it to blindly allow every URL scheme known to man. It seems reasonable to limit it to do http/https and MAYBE mailto.
I want to complain about the terminology used. It is probably just me, but RCE implies no user action required. It is a stupid, bad error yes, but because it requires the user to load a payload file and click on a link I would not really categorize it as a "remote" code execution type vulnerability.
But yeah, pedantic terminology aside, what a stupid stupid error. In notepad, of all things, reading text files should be safe. It reminds me of the WMF failure. "No you can't get a virus from playing a video" is what I would tell people. And then microsoft in their infinite wisdom said "Herp Derp, why don't we package the executable video decoder right in the video file. It will make searching for a codec a thing of the past" Sigh, smooth move microsoft, thanks for making a liar out of me.
clicking links should not be a security issue and yes the CVE is totally deserved: that's remote code execution.
You can literally one-shot Opus 4.6 to make a better, faster, safer, more secure notepad.exe than the one that comes with Windows.
This isn't an AI slop problem.
Well, it might be "more secure" in the sense of "no hacker will use it as an attack vector", not necessarily "it is free of security of security bugs".
Tools are almost never the problem.
The application of tools is.
I 100% agree. I'm just trying to point out the problem isn't Microsoft AI slopping their software. Even if you slopped it, the software could turn out better than what they're putting out.
There must be something much worse than slop going on to get to this point.