You would prefer it automatically pull down and install malware?

Sort of. The program uses a specific part of the website for its auto update. And it also didn’t do any kinds of TLS (https) validation (which would prevent changing the destination). They also signed their installers (which would throw an error if the file had been modified) but the auto update didn’t check for a valid signature. So basically the two big things that a browser would do when you visit the site to download the installer, the auto updater just… Wasn’t doing.

So people who visited the site to manually download the installer were fine. They would have been alerted if the TLS cert was invalid or if the installer wasn’t properly signed. But if you used the auto updater, you wouldn’t get any of those errors and it would happily install the malware.

Last I checked the source of the winget package was github, which is the same on the official website. So I would imagine that updating via Winget is just as vulnerable. The details are super vague.

Edit: Somebody else commented that it was only auto-update that was compromised, and winget would be considered a manual update because it download from their github. So I think winget may be safe.

Dont quote me on that though, the information is still super vague and I am going off of somebody else's comment.

Yeah it does. It's in Settings > Preferences > Misc. There's a dropdown to disable automatic updates.

Just to be clear, N++ wasn't compromised, the shared web host running the auto update infrastructure was. They responsibly disclosed it and shared safety steps. I don't know if it is time to bail on them yet.

Some options are atom, brackets/phoenix, lime text. I went with gVim for now.

Kate.