"break" Notepad

[dahli]

1. Open up Notepad (not Wordpad, not Word or any other word processor)
2. Type in the sentence below:
this app can break
3. Save the file to your hard drive.
4. Close Notepad
5. Open the saved file by double clicking it.


THIS WILL NOT CAUSE ANY DAMAGE TO YOUR SYSTEM.

[lufbra]

Not wanting to sound paranoid, but why ask folks here to do something that they have no clue what happens as far as safety in their computer. No doubt that looking at your status here (Hijack Helper), it's safe to do (at least I hope so), it's just that I thought you could at least say it's not dangerous towards anyone's computer. :)

[Vercades]

Hmm strange nothing but, squares show up wonder why those words aren't accessible.

[smurfy]

Spolier Alert: Explanation here (http://blogs.msdn.com/michkap/archive/2006/06/14/631016.aspx)
Not really breaking anything, just exposing another Microsoft Knows Best (but it doesn't really) bit of programming.

[Vercades]

I would say more so preventing malicious intent but, I'm no expert.

[z1p]

I would say more so preventing malicious intent but, I'm no expert.Definitly not the case here. Notepad and Windows are trying to be 'smart' here and failed. The biggest problem with software being 'smart' is that there are usually more ways for it to break. I'm a strong believer of the K.I.S.S principle when it comes to software. There is no way I could count the number of times I've seen broken software because it was written to make a 'guess' about something and sooner or later a case is found where the code 'guesses' wrong. This is exactly what is being shown here, the Windows APIs are making a guess as to how the text is encoded and in this example, it guesses wrong.

[Spider]

That glitch has been fixed in Windows Vista Ultimate because the default save encoding is in ANSI.
You can also select Unicode, Unicode big endian, and UTF-8.

[G_Dem]

Reading down on smurfy's link and tried:

bush hid the facts

and it done the same thing! lol. Where's Nick Grana when you need him for the conspiracy theories???

[renegade600]

it makes you wonder what else there is. :rotflmao:

[Snurfen]

hahahahahahahahahahahaha
great rouse, liked that :thumbsup:

[The Dude]

Hmm i use Notepad2 and it just displayed "this app can break"

Heh

[dammit]

As the bard once said... much ado about nothing. Interesting tho

[Vercades]

A famous dynasty leader once said "One grain of sand can tip the scales". If we're going to continue in this direction.

[Snurfen]

As the Mr Bean once said "Who's round next?"

[PurestLight]

Hmm i use Notepad2 and it just displayed "this app can break"

Heh

I didnt get any little squares either, just the words...

[thelamberts]

Tried both "this app can break" and "bush hid the facts" statements in notepad, notepad2, editpad lite, textpad.

All ok...go figure...no fun for me...

[G_Dem]

You need to open notepad from new (not edit an old text file) and then write one of those without the "". Then save it, close it and re open it.

Dont know if anyone has tried this but once you do it and open the file, if you delete the squares and then type it in again and save it, when you re open it, it shows as normal without the squares.

[thelamberts]

You need to open notepad from new (not edit an old text file) and then write one of those without the "". Then save it, close it and re open it.


Yup that's what I did

WinXP Pro SP2 all updates

dunno what else the difference could be.....

Have a good one

Marty!

[G_Dem]

What Encoding are you saving as? It wont work with anything other than ANSI.

[thelamberts]

Hi guys

I really don't want to lose sleep over this issue; but according to a couple of articles I have read; the break note pad trick is not foolproof.

I guess my PC lets it slip through.....

The documentation for IsTextUnicode (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/intl/unicode_81np.asp?frame=true) says:


These tests are not foolproof. The statistical tests assume certain amounts of variation between low and high bytes in a string, and some ASCII strings can slip through. For example, if lpBuffer points to the ASCII string 0x41, 0x0A, 0x0D, 0x1D (A\n\r^Z), the string passes the IS_TEXT_UNICODE_STATISTICS test, though failure would be preferable.


Anyway...Take care and have a great Thanksgiving (Canadian Style)

Marty