Trojan.WinLNK.Agent

Cybercriminals often abuse legitimate file formats to disguise their malicious files – documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and even the rarely used 'LNK' format may be used to disguise a corrupted file as a harmless one. Corrupted LNK files usually serve one sole purpose – to execute a macro script that fetches a payload from an outside server, and then initializes it on the compromised host. All this activity takes place in a background process so that the user will not notice anything out of the ordinary. To keep your PC protected against corrupted LNK files is to use a trustworthy anti-virus tool.

One of the generic detections that antivirus products use for malicious LNK files is 'Trojan.WinLNK.Agent' – if your antivirus identifies such an issue on your computer, then you must immediately find and delete the file responsible for the alert. If you have recently opened this file on your PC, then it is recommended to run a full system scan to make sure that it did not manage to bring any malicious software.

We would like to remind you that cybercriminals often rely on the latest news trends to disguise their malicious software – at the moment, files detected as 'Trojan.WinLNK.Agent' may be spread as documents related to the Coronavirus outbreak. If you happen to receive an email regarding this subject, then we advise you to make sure that your computer is sufficiently protected by a reputable anti-malware tool.