Unpatched Code Execution Zero-day Vulnerability Founds in Notepad – Google Security Researcher

A Well-Known Google security researcher Tavis Ormandy revealed that he discovered a critical Code execution zero-day vulnerability in Notepad.

Notepad is a simple text editor for Microsoft Windows and a basic text-editing program which enables computer users to create documents. It was first released as a mouse-based MS-DOS program in 1983.

Tavis already reported this vulnerability to Microsoft and given them 90 days to fix it, a strict Google Project Zero’s vulnerability disclosure deadline policy defined by Google along with a publicly visible bugtracker where the vulnerability disclosure process is openly documented if the vendor failed to patch the reported vulnerability.

He reported the bug via his Twitter feed where he said, “this is a real bug,” It’s a real memory corruption exploit. Clearly, an attacker cannot right click dialogs, so that is not a security bug.”

As I said, "this is a real bug", It's a real memory corruption exploit. Clearly an attacker cannot right click dialogs, so that is not a security bug.

— Tavis Ormandy (@taviso) May 28, 2019

As he posted a screenshot, the vulnerability exploited the shell in the Notepad that spawns the windows command prompt in the Notepad process.

Am I the first person to pop a shell in notepad? 🤣 ….believe it or not, It's a real bug! 🐞 pic.twitter.com/t2wTh7E93p

— Tavis Ormandy (@taviso) May 28, 2019

Since the bug is under 90 days disclosure policy, Tavis denied to share further details about this vulnerability, also confirmed that he developed a real exploit for this Code Execution Vulnerability in notepad.

Chaouki Bekrar, Founder of @Zerodium Said, he is not a first person who finds this flaw, but he is the first one who reported this vulnerability to Microsoft.

Tavis also answer the question about the details of this vulnerability, and he said, planning to write a blog post about the discovery along with exploitation.

Yep, as soon as a patch is released we'll derestrict the bug in our issue tracker. I'm also planning a blog post on the discovery and exploitation, it was a fun challenge. 🙂

— Tavis Ormandy (@taviso) May 29, 2019

We may expect the details after the security patch release by Microsoft and “GBHackers on Security” will update you about the complete information about this vulnerability once he update this regards.

Tavis found many other vulnerabilities in various software and services including Ghostscript, Cloudflare, BitTorrent, keeper and more.

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