Security Experts:

Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Vulnerabilities

Google Researcher Finds Code Execution Vulnerability in Notepad

Google Project Zero researcher Tavis Ormandy revealed on Tuesday that he identified a code execution vulnerability in Microsoft’s Notepad text editor.

Google Project Zero researcher Tavis Ormandy revealed on Tuesday that he identified a code execution vulnerability in Microsoft’s Notepad text editor.

Ormandy says he has reported his findings to Microsoft and the company has been given 90 days – per Project Zero’s vulnerability disclosure policy – to release a patch. Details of the security hole will be made public after 90 days or possibly sooner if Microsoft rolls out a fix.

The researcher has only revealed so far that the vulnerability is a memory corruption and he posted a screenshot showing how he managed to “pop a shell in Notepad.” The screenshot apparently shows that the vulnerability has been exploited to spawn a Windows Command Prompt.

Code execution vulnerability in Notepad

Several individuals have speculated on how the flaw may be triggered, but Ormandy has not released any information on the topic. He did, however, clarify that he has developed a “real exploit” for it.

Chaouki Bekrar, founder of exploit acquisition firm Zerodium, suggested on Twitter that this is not the only memory corruption vulnerability that can be used to “pwn” Notepad.

Ormandy found many vulnerabilities in popular software in the past years, including Microsoft’s Malware Protection Engine, uTorrent, Grammarly, Keeper, Ghostscript, LastPass, Kaspersky Antivirus, and Cisco WebEx.

Related: Windows Defender Ported to Linux in Fuzzing Tool Demo

Related: Notepad++ Site Hacked in Response to “Je suis Charlie” Edition

Written By

Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a contributing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.

Click to comment

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

Join this webinar to learn best practices that organizations can use to improve both their resilience to new threats and their response times to incidents.

Register

Join this live webinar as we explore the potential security threats that can arise when third parties are granted access to a sensitive data or systems.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Vulnerabilities

Less than a week after announcing that it would suspended service indefinitely due to a conflict with an (at the time) unnamed security researcher...

Application Security

Drupal released updates that resolve four vulnerabilities in Drupal core and three plugins.

Risk Management

The supply chain threat is directly linked to attack surface management, but the supply chain must be known and understood before it can be...

Vulnerabilities

Apple has released updates for macOS, iOS and Safari and they all include a WebKit patch for a zero-day vulnerability tracked as CVE-2023-23529.

Cloud Security

VMware vRealize Log Insight vulnerability allows an unauthenticated attacker to take full control of a target system.

Application Security

A CSRF vulnerability in the source control management (SCM) service Kudu could be exploited to achieve remote code execution in multiple Azure services.

IoT Security

Lexmark warns of a remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability impacting over 120 printer models, for which PoC code has been published.

Vulnerabilities

GoAnywhere MFT users warned about a zero-day remote code injection exploit that can be targeted directly from the internet