What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2026-71858: Notepad++: shortcuts.xml Macro HMAC Bypass Enables Conditional Elevated Command Execution

• Severity: medium (CVSS 5.4 v4.0)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.1% 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-78

Description

Notepad++ is a free and open-source source code editor. Prior to 8.9.7, macros loaded from an attacker-controlled shortcuts.xml bypass the HMAC validation applied to UserDefinedCommands and can invoke Scintilla actions and the internal Open in Default Viewer command in an elevated Notepad++ process, allowing protected file modification and conditional elevated command execution when a local attacker influences settingsDir and a user triggers the macro. 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/7686e5a3025eaf1fb8e024c2ceb54670ea05f5fb
• 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-f4rj-vqq4-wvg4
• https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/security/advisories/GHSA-f4rj-vqq4-wvg4

Get alerted when CVE-2026-71858 or the next vulnerability affects your stack