What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2026-52886: Notepad++: session.xml backupFilePath starts_with Bypass

• Severity: medium (CVSS 5.1 v4.0)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2026-08-17 · updated 2026-09-09
• Weakness: CWE-22

Description

Notepad++ is a free and open-source source code editor. Prior to 8.9.7, Notepad++ validates the backupFilePath attribute from session.xml with std::wstring::starts_with against the expected backup directory without path normalization, allowing parent-directory sequences during snapshot-mode restoration to read an arbitrary user-readable file outside the backup directory into an editor tab. This issue is fixed in version 8.9.7.

Affected products

• notepad-plus-plus: before 8.9.7

References

• https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/commit/7e66f36db666a13b09fb5c31232ab2ca1c2ebccc
• https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/releases/tag/v8.9.7
• https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/security/advisories/GHSA-rqfm-pw34-r7j6
• https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/security/advisories/GHSA-rqfm-pw34-r7j6

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