From my understanding: Basically the attackers could reply to your version check request (usually done automatically) and tell N++ that there were a new version available. If you then approved the update dialogue, N++ would download and execute the binary from the update link that the server sent you. But this didn’t necessarily need to be a real update, it could have been any binary since neither the answer to the update check nor the download link were verified by N++
Expanding on this: the exploit was against their domain name, redirecting selected update requests away from the notepad++ servers. The software itself didn’t validate that the domain actually points to notepad++ servers, and the notepad++ update servers would not see any information that would tell them what was happening.
Likely they picked some specific developers with a known public IP, and only used this to inject those specific people with malware.
From my understanding: Basically the attackers could reply to your version check request (usually done automatically) and tell N++ that there were a new version available. If you then approved the update dialogue, N++ would download and execute the binary from the update link that the server sent you. But this didn’t necessarily need to be a real update, it could have been any binary since neither the answer to the update check nor the download link were verified by N++
Thats what i was thinking, but there is no mention on if this did happen and if it did what was compromised or allowed to happen.
How would n++ devs know?
Expanding on this: the exploit was against their domain name, redirecting selected update requests away from the notepad++ servers. The software itself didn’t validate that the domain actually points to notepad++ servers, and the notepad++ update servers would not see any information that would tell them what was happening.
Likely they picked some specific developers with a known public IP, and only used this to inject those specific people with malware.