Infrastructure delivering updates for Notepad++—a widely used text editor for Windows—was compromised for six months by suspected China-state hackers who used their control to deliver backdoored versions of the app to select targets, developers said Monday.
“I deeply apologize to all users affected by this hijacking,” the author of a post published to the official notepad-plus-plus.org site wrote Monday. The post said that the attack began last June with an “infrastructure-level compromise that allowed malicious actors to intercept and redirect update traffic destined for notepad-plus-plus.org.” The attackers, whom multiple investigators tied to the Chinese government, then selectively redirected certain targeted users to malicious update servers where they received backdoored updates. Notepad++ didn’t regain control of its infrastructure until December.
The attackers used their access to install a never-before-seen payload that has been dubbed Chrysalis. Security firm Rapid 7 descrbed it as a “custom, feature-rich backdoor.”
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