For instance, last week, Wordfence reported a zero–day flaw in a WordPress plugin called BackupBuddy with five million installations. More generally, plugins are often exploited as attack vectors by malicious actors.
To mitigate this threat, the security experts said companies should monitor unusual child processes of Notepad++ and pay special attention to shell product types.įor more information about the attack scenario, the original Cybereason advisory is available at this link. “In our attack scenario, the PowerShell command will execute a Meterpreter payload,” the company wrote.Ĭybereason then ran Notepad++ as ‘administrator’ and re–ran the payload, effectively managing to achieve administrative privileges on the affected system.
Using the C# programming language, the security experts created a dynamic link library (DLL) running a PowerShell command on the first initial press of any key inside Notepad++. In their advisory, the Cybereason team analyzed the Notepad++ plugin loading mechanism and drafted an attack scenario based on this vector.
#Notepad++ install
“This backdoor enables this threat actor to install a keylogger on the machine and communicate with a C2 server to send the output of this software.” “The APT group StrongPity is known to leverage a legitimate Notepad++ installer accompanied with malicious executables, allowing it to persist after a reboot on a machine,” the Cybereason advisory reads. Notepad++ is a free (free as in both free speech and free beer) source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several programming languages and. It includes spellchecker, word counter, autosave, find and replace etc. However, advanced persistent threat (APT) groups have leveraged Notepad++ plugins for nefarious purposes in the past. Write down quick notes and print a simple text document with Online Notepad editor. NET package for Visual Studio that provides a basic template for building plugins.
#Notepad++ how to
“Using an open–source project, Notepad++ Plugin Pack, a security researcher that goes by the name RastaMouse was able to demonstrate how to build a malicious plugin that can be used as a persistence mechanism,” the company wrote in an advisory on Wednesday. If you later decide to login with an account, your local notes will be uploaded to that account as well. Notes will only be stored on your mobile device. aNotepad can be used in either Standalone mode or Connected mode. Threat actors may abuse Notepad++ plugins to circumvent security mechanisms and achieve persistence on their victim machine, new research from security company Cybereason suggests. Take notes on the go and share notes online with aNotepad mobile app.