CVE-2026-46710: high-severity vulnerability in notepad-plus-plus
Notepad++: Privilege Escalation in the Installer via Uncontrolled Executable Search Path
Published · Updated
21Vexday Risk Score
No sign of exploitation. No public exploitation artifact known so far.
ssvc Trackcvss 7.5epss 0.2%
exploitation probability
0.2%top 96% of all CVEs
observed exploitation
nono source reports it
Notepad++ is a free and open-source source code editor. From 8.9.4 until 8.9.6, Notepad++ contains a local privilege escalation vulnerability in the installer. During installation, the installer invokes powershell.exe without using an absolute path after setting the working directory to the installation contextMenu directory. If an attacker can pre-place a malicious powershell.exe in a user-writable custom installation directory, and a privileged user later runs the installer and selects that directory, the attacker-controlled executable is launched with the elevated privileges of the installer. This vulnerability is fixed in 8.9.6.
CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:H/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
Affected products
notepad-plus-plus · notepad-plus-plusRelated CVEs — notepad-plus-plus
In the same product, most dangerous first.
CVE-2025-15556HIGHNotepad++ < 8.8.9 WinGUp Updater Lacks Update Integrity VerificationEPSS 1.8%KEVCVE-2022-32168HIGHnotepad-plus-plus - DLL HijackingEPSS 0.8%CVE-2025-49144HIGHNotepad++ Privilege Escalation in Installer via Uncontrolled Executable Search PathEPSS 0.7%CVE-2026-48778HIGHNotepad++: Arbitrary Code Execution via config.xml commandLineInterpreterEPSS 0.6%CVE-2023-40031HIGHNotepad++ vulnerable to heap buffer write overflow in Utf8_16_Read::convertEPSS 0.5%CVE-2026-57233HIGHNotepad++: Path Traversal (Zip Slip) in WinGup Plugin ExtractionEPSS 0.5%