Open source Notepad++ calls for aid

Wants help to take down a copycat website

An open source text and source code editor has asked for help taking down a competitor "riddled with malicious advertisements."

Notepad++, a free and open source text editor, has appealed to the internet for help in taking down a copycat website that could pose a security risk.

The project's official website is 'notepad-plus-plus.org'. The competing site, 'notepad.plus', is both difficult to distinguish and has managed to rank highly in search results - just after the official site, when we searched.

Don Ho, Notepad++'s founder, says he has received "numerous complaints" about the website, which calls itself "an unofficial fan website created for general information/educational purposes only."

That claim is backed up by the site including download links that redirect to Notepad++. However, Ho writes that the site "harbours a hidden agenda," and is "riddled with malicious advertisements on every page."

To test these claims, we visited the offending site without an adblocker. Although we noticed large spaces that could be used for advertising, no ads were present when we visited.

Ho has called for Notepad++ users to report notepad.plus to Google via the malicious software reporting tool. However, community members have pointed out that the site isn't actually promoting malicious software - only Notepad++'s own downloads page.

"Sure, they might gain trust and then eventually start shipping malware instead. But so could the people who run the notepad-plus-plus site," commented developer Robby Zambito.

Such a move is not unheard of in the open source space, where projects can be compromised or corrupted by bad actors - or sometimes even the official developer.

Those cases are often spotted and stopped fairly quickly thanks to passionate fans of open source software. Still, the threat is real and can cause significant damage before being stopped.

For now though, the future of notepad.plus remains uncertain.