By Justin Pot
Publication Date: 2026-02-17 20:00:00
AI-related changes to Notepad—yes, that Notepad—allowed attackers to execute arbitrary code on your computer. The vulnerability was related to Markdown support, which was added last year. Markdown is a simple way to add formatting, including links, to plaintext documents—and links were the source of the vulnerability.
“An attacker could trick a user into clicking a malicious link inside a Markdown file opened in Notepad, causing the application to launch unverified protocols that load and execute remote files,” according to the security response notice.
Markdown has long been popular in certain parts of the internet—anyone who occasionally comments on Reddit or chats using Discord is likely at least a little familiar with it. But the markup language has become even more important in the age of AI—most documents are converted to plain text Markdown files to train models.
Microsoft is patching more bugs than ever in Windows 11
Markdown support was added…
