Techlines Today

Weird Notepad.exe Bug

By Adam Myers ⋅ June 14, 2006 ⋅ Tags: Security, Windows

I’m not sure how this went unnoticed for so long, but the Internets are ablaze with this tidbit today:

1. Open up Notepad
2. Type in this sentence exactly (without quotes): “this app can break”
3. Save the file
4. Close Notepad
5. Open the saved file
6. ?????
7. PROFIT?

Although, now that I think about it, there actually are some forbidden strings in older versions Notepad. Microsoft got annoyed with people opening executables in Notepad and seeing random text, consequently, for a while Notepad would refuse to open exe’s, which were of course identified by these “forbidden strings”.

However, the backlash against that was severe enough that on my updated XP, Notepad displays exe’s as one would expect. But I’m fairly sure that if you went back to older versions, circa WinMe perhaps, you would find that Notepad would refuse to open such files.

Interesting? Probably not, but not everything can be interesting …