Cyberdudebivash

Why .LNK attacks work Anatomy of a malicious shortcut Common delivery tricks How to spot fake .LNK files Detections: Sigma, YARA, queries Hardening: GPO and ASR Incident response playbook PowerShell quick audit User training checklist Why .LNK attacks work Windows shortcuts ( .lnk ) launch programs with arguments. Attackers abuse this by shipping a shortcut that looks like a document or a single file inside a ZIP/ISO. File Explorer hides extensions by default, so a name like Invoice.pdf.lnk appears as a PDF. One double-click executes the attacker’s command. Shortcuts bypass macro blocks and work anywhere script interpreters are present. Defense requires layered controls: visibility of extensions, email filtering, constrained interpreters, and detections for suspicious parents like Explorer spawning script hosts. Anatomy of a malicious shortcut Target: cmd.exe , powershell.exe , wscript.exe , mshta.exe , or rundll32.exe . Arg...