There are some torrrents showing up with .lnkextension (ex: movie.mp3.lnk, tvshow.mkv.lnk…) and automated software (Sonarr, Radarr, Lidarr, qBittorrent RSS Downloader) could pick those torrents (but not import).
These (fake) torrents include a .lnk file that executes a script on your Windows
HOW TO exclude from download on qBittorrent.
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Go to Options -> Downloads
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Enable “Exclude file names”
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Add patterns:
(one by line)
*.mp4.lnk
*.mp3.lnk
*.mkv.lnk
*.torrent.lnk
Or exclude all together: *.lnk
Example on VirusTotal https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/e74f64df6ebaf3a1b6e3f42591eb6e87d2ac2828eb5a99fd8d3d82c140137fc9/detection
How is the link file executing malware? Can you put any shell script as the target?
I am pretty sure a link file can open cmd/powershell with parameters to execute commands
yep! I’ve found out browsing hacking/spamming site and i’ve found something too good to be true, it downloaded archive nested inside other archive and in it was silngle .lnk file leading to “the resource”. Peeking inside i’ve found powershell executing base64 (or base32?) encoded script (it’s got commandline option for that. if you want to ask wtf ask microsoft, and tell me), it dl’d some exe from some site and ran it, site was down alredy.
You can put the script itself as the link. Shortcut to: powershell -command “Write-Host ‘Gonna pwn your shit’”