The torrent was titled as .mkv (normal and expected) but the actual file was .lnk (not normal)... so you would have had to open a weird random .lnk file to activate the trojan?

[–] Cochise 25 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Windows hides extensions by default.

[–] uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 24 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Unhiding extensions is one of the first things I do when setting up windows, but it will still hide the .lnk extension on shortcuts, so it's still a vector for phishing attacks (specifically, tricking the user to do something that runs malicious code).

Experienced pirates will get into the habit of taking precautions against malware attacks and will distrust downloads until they are sufficiently vetted,

[–] leftzero@lemmynsfw.com 3 points 7 months ago

Unhiding extensions wouldn't help here, as the .lnk extension is hidden even if you unhide the others, as it's the extension for shortcut files; you have to edit an obscure registry key if you want to unhide it.

(That said, it being a shortcut it should have the small shortcut arrow in the icon, unless you've used a third party tool or the registry to disable it, so it should still be easily recognisable as a shortcut.)

load more comments (8 replies)