My company wants to disable note++ as admin

Michelle Chen

My company said that for security improvement, company will disable the ability to run Note++ as Admin.

My question is: What is the security risking for running Note++ as Admin?

Thanks,

PeterJones

Notepad++ running as admin has the ability to edit any protected file, which would allow changing config files or protected batch scripts.

Add to that the Run menu, which allows you to run any program as the same user/mode that ran Notepad++ (so Notepad++ as admin can be used to run any program as admin).

I wouldn’t necessarily agree with their decision personally, but I wouldn’t say it’s an unreasonable decision on their part.

Michelle Chen

@PeterJones Thank you for quick response and professional explanation.
The feature I love most for Notepad++ is “Find in Files”, since I usually need to search among all kinds of documents in a particular folder path in windows explore to find the files that include the key word I want to search. Besides Notepad++, I do not have any other apps/tools that can help me to do this. Is this feature will be lost when my admin right be taken away from Notepad++?

Terry R

@Michelle-Chen said in My company wants to disable note++ as admin:

I do not have any other apps/tools that can help me to do this. Is this feature will be lost when my admin right be taken away from Notepad++?

When you log onto a PC with the account you normally use, can you view the files you want to search within later using Notepad++? If so then you should not need to run Notepad++ as “admin”. If however the folder is restricted to admin level accounts there may be an issue if your normal account isn’t in the “admin” group.

Also note that running Notepad++ as “admin” will sometimes be problematic as it runs in a different “context” to the account you logon as. So if you have network drives mapped under the normal account, those will not show under the run as “admin”.

Terry

Michelle Chen

@Terry-R Thank you for answering my questions.
Though my company recently took away our PC administrator right, I can see the files which I was allow to view in the windows explore. So I guess that I do not need to tun Notepad++ as “admin” in order to be able to search key words crossing files as I always do.

I do not need to search any network drivers mapped.