Office process accessed an unusual .LNK file

Synopsis

Field	Value
Activation Period	14 Days
Training Period	30 Days
Test Period	N/A (single event)
Deduplication Period	7 Days
Required Data	XDR Agent with eXtended Threat Hunting (XTH)
ATT&CK Tactic	Execution (TA0002), Persistence (TA0003)
ATT&CK Technique	User Execution (T1204), Boot or Logon Autostart Execution: Shortcut Modification (T1547.009)
Severity	Low

Description

An attacker may embed a .LNK file in an Office document to execute malicious code.

Attacker's Goals

Modify or create a shortcut to gain code or program execution.

Investigative actions

• Check if the Office document contains a shortcut object.
• Check the content (strings) of the document object for a .LNK shortcut.
• Check the content of the shortcut.