Shortcuts (LNK files) in Windows are indicated by curved arrows. We often treat them as background noise and don't consider what they actually do beyond opening apps. In fact, there is a huge gap ...

Barriers that Microsoft has placed to prevent malicious macros has forced some cybercriminals to use LNK files for malware delivery, but at the cost of easier detection. For years attackers have used ...

Eeek! All versions of Microsoft Windows have a nasty shortcut-file vulnerability, it has emerged. Simply displaying the icon of a crafty .LNK file will cause malware infection. The Stuxnet worm has ...

North Korea's APT37 threat group is providing fresh evidence of how adversaries have pivoted to using LNK, or shortcut files, to distribute malicious payloads after Microsoft began blocking macros by ...

Microsoft has quietly rolled out a partial mitigation for the high-severity Windows LNK vulnerability, CVE-2025-9491, which multiple state-sponsored groups and cybercrime gangs have been exploiting as ...

Forensic investigators use LNK shortcut files to recover metadata about recently accessed files, including files deleted after the time of access. In a recent investigation, FireEye Mandiant ...

Hackers who normally distributed malware via phishing attachments with malicious macros gradually changed tactics after Microsoft Office began blocking them by default, switching to new file types ...

The Emotet botnet is now using Windows shortcut files (.LNK) containing PowerShell commands to infect victims computers, moving away from Microsoft Office macros that are now disabled by default. The ...

When Microsoft patched a vulnerability last summer that allowed threat actors to use Windows’ shortcut (.lnk) files in exploits, defenders might have hoped use of this tactic would decline. They were ...

It's not particularly surprising, as that bit of code doesn't actually seem to contain the malware. It's shady as all fuck, but it depends on the existence of the .lnk file to actually do anything. If ...