Attackers are increasingly exploiting Windows shortcut (LNK) files for malware delivery. Palo Alto Unit 42 telemetry revealed 21,098 malicious LNK samples in 2023, which surged to 68,392 in 2024.
In this article, Unit 42 researchers present an in-depth investigation of LNK malware, based on analysis of 30,000 recent samples. Windows shortcut files use the .lnk file extension and function as a virtual link that allows people to easily access other files without having to navigate through multiple folders on a Windows host. The flexibility of LNK files makes them a powerful tool for attackers, as they can both execute malicious content and masquerade as legitimate files to deceive victims into unintentionally launching malware.
Read more…
Source: Palo Alto Unit 42
Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest news and insights delivered right to your inbox.
Related:
- CISA Releases Four Industrial Control Systems Advisories
May 23, 2023
CISA released four Industrial Control Systems (ICS) advisories on May 23, 2023. These advisories provide timely information about current security issues, vulnerabilities, and exploits surrounding ICS. ICSA-23-143-01 Hitachi Energy AFS65x, AFS67x, AFR67x and AFF66x Products ICSA-23-143-02 Hitachi Energy RTU500 Read more… Source: U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Related story: CISA Adds Three Known Exploited Vulnerabilities to Catalog
- Dorchester school IT system held to ransom in cyber attack
May 23, 2023
A school has been left unable to use email or accept payments following a cyber attack. Thomas Hardye School in Dorchester said its screens and systems had been locked since being targeted on Sunday. It said the attack was accompanied by a ransom demand, payable on the dark web. Read more… Source: BBC News
- Don’t @ Me: URL Obfuscation Through Schema Abuse
May 22, 2023
A technique is being used in the distribution of multiple families of malware that obfuscates the end destination of a URL by abusing the URL schema. Mandiant tracks this adversary methodology as “URL Schema Obfuscation”. The technique could increase the likelihood of a successful phishing attack, and could cause domain extraction errors in logging or security ...
- More UK councils caught by Capita’s open AWS bucket blunder
May 22, 2023
The bad news train keeps rolling for Capita, with more local British councils surfacing to say their data was put on the line by an unsecured AWS bucket, and, separately, pension clients warning of possible data theft in March’s mega breach. Colchester City Council was the first to step forward last week to claim that tech ...
- Cyber Signals: Shifting tactics fuel surge in business email compromise
May 19, 2023
Today Microsoft released the fourth edition of Cyber Signals highlighting a surge in cybercriminal activity around business email compromise (BEC). Microsoft has observed a 38 percent increase in cybercrime as a service (CaaS) targeting business email between 2019 and 2022. Successful BEC attacks cost organizations hundreds of millions of dollars annually. In 2022, the FBI’s Recovery ...
- Apple warns of three WebKit vulns under active exploitation, dozens more CVEs across its range
May 19, 2023
Apple has issued a bushel of security updates and warned that three of the flaws it’s fixed are under active attack. The three are CVE-2023-32409, CVE-2023-28204, and CVE-2023-32373, all of which impact the WebKit browser engine that Apple champions and employs in its Safari browser – and demands be used by other browsers on iOS. Read more… Source: ...