CVE-2026-20841: Arbitrary Code Execution in the Windows Notepad
Brief
In this excerpt of a TrendAI Research Services vulnerability report, Nikolai Skliarenko and Yazhi Wang of the TrendAI Research team detail a recently patched command injection vulnerability in the Windows Notepad application. This bug was originally discovered by Cristian Papa and Alasdair Gorniak of Delta Obscura.
Successful exploitation of this vulnerability could result in the execution of arbitrary commands in the security context of the victim's account. The following is a portion of their write-up covering CVE-2026-20841, with a few minimal modifications.
A remote code execution vulnerability has been reported in Microsoft Windows Notepad. The vulnerability is due to improper validation of links in Markdown files.
A remote attacker could exploit this vulnerability by enticing the victim to download and interact with a malicious file.