Comment by gruez
6 hours ago
>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?"
But so far as I can tell the bug isn't related to "network-aware rendering stack" or AI (as other people are blindly speculating)?
From MSRC:
>How could an attacker exploit this vulnerability?
>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.
Sounds like a bug where you could put an url like \\evil.example\virus.exe into a link, and if a user clicks it executes virus.exe
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.
I think there are more text editors around that render clickable links than there are that don't. Even your terminal probably renders clickable links.
Despite the scary words and score this wouldn't even be a vulnerability if people weren't so hard wired to click every link they see. It's not some URL parsing gone wrong triggering an RCE. Most likely they allowed something like file:// links which of course opens that file. Totally valid link, but the feature must be neutered to only http(s):// because people.