Recent reports of a sophisticated attack on a flaw involving shortcuts in Windows has prompted Microsoft to put out a security advisory, reports PCMag. All current versions of Windows suffer from the flaw- that includes XP up to the just-released service pack for 7 and Server 2008 R2.

The flaw comes from the way Windows handles shortcut .LNK files when they are executed through the shell, which typically means Windows Explorer. The attack is commonly spread with removable devices like flash drives and CDs with a malicious shortcut file and an associated binary. The malicious code can be run when the victim browses to the root folder of the drive, causing the shell to load and parse the icon.

Having AutoPlay disabled helps because then the attack would only work if the victim manually browses to the root folder of the device. Windows 7 has AutoPlay for removable disks disabled by default. In addition, flash drives aren’t the only devices that could harbor this malware; it can also be spread on network shares or remote WebDAV shares.

Microsoft lists two workarounds; disabling shortcut icons, which would make Windows look strange, and disabling WebDAV which would only affect that one possible route of attack. As for patch development, PCMag explains what we might expect:

This is quite a serious vulnerability and Microsoft has begun their process of investigation and patch development. This is an excellent candidate for an out-of-band update, especially as we are a month away from the next scheduled Patch Tuesday and targeted attacks are already being conducted.

While it is dangerous, this attack isn’t too dire because it is easily caught by most anti-malware software.