China, Russia, the US, fucking Israel. They all piss me off so fucking much. Can't we live in a sane world just for a single fucking day?
Oof. Kudos to Notepad++ for being up front with the details.
If I recall correctly this is the second time this has happened to N++. Fool me once… can’t get fooled again.
Three times++, actually. The second attack was documented to have resumed after the third, with different payload URLs.
I think I was remembering the CIA Wikileaks one which was a compromised DLL.
I've kind of stopped following things up since I left windows, but maybe you're remembering when this actually happened a while ago? This is just some in-progress post-mortem report.
This is why I don't update things that don't need updates. Untill I switched to Linux I had been using the same version for like a decade.
Also I'd imagine the American government is doing the exact same shit. Or rather Israel is doing it in behalf of the American government
So should we at least uninstall our current Notepad++ and then download a new version? What else should we do, the post really doesn’t offer any advice.
In the old post from when the update was released a Heise article is linked, that contains indicators of compromise, and in turn links to Kevin Beaumont for the details of his analysis:
https://lemmy.zip/post/54712916
https://www.heise.de/en/news/Notepad-updater-installed-malware-11109726.html
https://doublepulsar.com/small-numbers-of-notepad-users-reporting-security-woes-371d7a3fd2d9
I don't think you'll need to uninstall. If I'm reading the article correctly, it looks like they plugged the hole in their update process by switching hosting providers to one that's even more hardened and secure. So requests from the updater should go to the correct place now and not the state-sponsored hacker.
Then in about a month, the next version of notepad++ that is released will also properly validate/verify any downloaded update files from the server.
You could also just disable the checks for updates from within the application too. Or better yet, use something like winget to handle the updates instead of the built-in updater.
The article literally states that should you download the latest version from their site directly and then use the installer to update manually. Who knows if those who were effected already could have something else compromising the update/install process. I wouldnt update from the built in updater until the new fix with certificate and signature verification is released.
So what malware got shipped?
I would like to know starting from wich version should i be concerned. I haven't updated in a while i think.
The timeline says the attack started in June of 2025 and continued through Dec 2, 2025. If you installed, updated, or silently updated during that period you may have been targeted / compromised.
There were a lot of typos in the linked announcement.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
