Notepad++ v8.5.7 Released: Fix for 4 Security Vulnerabilities

Notepad++ v8.5.7 has been released, which has several bug fixes and new features. There has also been Integrity and authenticity validation, added Security enhancement and fixed a memory leak while reading Utf8-16 files.

Multiple vulnerabilities in Notepad++ relating to Heap buffer read overflow, Heap buffer write overflow & Global buffer read overflow were previously reported. However, the new version of Notepad++ claims to have patched these vulnerabilities.

Gitlab security researcher Jaroslav Lobačevski (@JarLob) discovered these vulnerabilities during the end of August 2023. However, as part of the GitLab coordinated disclosure policy, these vulnerabilities were publicly disclosed before Notepad++ patched them.

Notepad++ v8.5.7

This current new version of Notepad++ implemented the integrity and authenticity validation by introducing the GPG Notepad++ Public key which can be used for the verification of GPG Signature. In addition to that, SHA-256 digests of binary packages have also been added which can be used for checking the integrity of your Notepad++ download.

As part of Bug fixes and new features, Notepad++ has fixed the vulnerabilities reported previously which had the CVE IDs CVE-2023-40031, CVE-2023-40036, CVE-2023-40164 & CVE-2023-40166. 

Other fixes include Document disassociated issue, Dragging tab performance issue, Session file saving problem, product version value displayed in file’s properties and activating wrong file(s) were also rectified as part of this new release.

Furthermore, Notepad++ has added an option to suppress file with more than 2GB. This option enables Notepad++ to wait for user confirmation before opening a large file.

“Notepad++ will completely hang and await user confirmation when trying to open a file bigger than 2GB.” reads the issue on GitHub. Notepad++ has also released their current version of source code which can be found in this link. 

It is recommended for users of Notepad++ to upgrade to version 8.5.7 in order to fix the vulnerabilities and improve the application’s performance.

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