Now would be a good time to ensure your Windows OS is up to date. Microsoft recently patched a serious vulnerability in Windows 11 related to Notepad, its text-editing tool.
The company said it fixed a “remote code execution” vulnerability. As technology website Techradar noted, the vulnerability had to do with Markdown — in which users can employ symbols to format text (e.g., asterisks to create italics) — which could allow bad actors to insert a dangerous link.
“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,” Microsoft wrote in a security bulletin. “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.”
Tech site Bleeping Computer tested the vulnerability and found that Microsoft now displays a warning before allowing such a link to be clicked. It’s pretty much the standard “this link may be unsafe” message most users have seen before.
The vulnerability should have been automatically fixed via a patch, but it’s worth double-checking to ensure Windows 11 has been updated recently on your device.
