Sophos releases LNK exploit protection tool

IT security and control firm Sophos has released a free tool to protect against a Windows zero-day vulnerability that is being actively exploited to infect computers. The Sophos windows shortcut exploit protection tool protects against a high profile vulnerability that allows malicious hackers to exploit a bug in the way that all versions of windows handles .LNK shortcut files. If Windows just displays the icon of an exploited shortcut file, malicious code can be executed - without requiring any interaction by the user.

But Sophos's free tool, intercepts shortcut files that contain the exploit, warning of the executable code that was attempting to run. That means it will stop malicious threats which use the vulnerability if they are on non-local disks, such as a USB stick.