Microsoft to patch critical shortcut flaw in Windows on Monday

By Ian on July 30, 2010, 03:18:03 PM. | 1 comments

Not too long ago, Microsoft issued a critical security advisory concerning shortcuts, wherein a computer could be exploited simply by the icon of a shortcut (.LNK files) being rendered. Many believed it would take some time for Microsoft to fix this issue due to the flaw affecting issues with code in Windows which dates back to Windows 95.

Luckily, they were wrong, as Microsoft will release an out-of-band patch on Monday to fix this critical security flaw once and for all. Meaning those speculating the patch would arrive in two weeks were nearly spot on.

Soon, no more need to disable icons

At the time of Microsoft confirming this security flaw, a workaround was described by Microsoft. This workaround completely disabled any and all icons, so all you would only see white rectangles in the place of your icons.

Also, many antivirus packages were updated with definitions to stop this flaw from harming their users, including Microsoft's own Security Essentials software.

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Categories: Microsoft, News, Security, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP

Tags: .lnk flaw, Windows Explorer, remote code execution, Windows update, patch, out-of-band