They finally did it. Microsoft has successfully over-engineered a text editor into a threat vector.
This CVE is an 8.8 severity RCE in Notepad of all things.
Apparently, the “innovation” of adding markdown support came with the ability of launching unverified protocols that load and execute remote files.
We have reached a point where the simple act of opening a .md file in a native utility can compromise your system.
I HATE that the industry started calling these RCE (specifically “passive” RCE). It really muddies the waters.
This isn’t a normal RCE where an attacker can remotely connect in and execute code. Those are very serious.
This is a passive RCE. Basically code injection from inappropriately parsing a file. And it doesn’t need to be remote. You can use a local file.