Unpatched Windows Zero-Day Flaw Exploited by 11 State-Sponsored Threat Groups Since 2017
Mar 18, 2025
Vulnerability / Windows Security
An unpatched security flaw impacting Microsoft Windows has been exploited by 11 state-sponsored groups from China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia as part of data theft, espionage, and financially motivated campaigns that date back to 2017. The zero-day vulnerability, tracked by Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) as ZDI-CAN-25373 , refers to an issue that allows bad actors to execute hidden malicious commands on a victim's machine by leveraging crafted Windows Shortcut or Shell Link (.LNK) files. "The attacks leverage hidden command line arguments within .LNK files to execute malicious payloads, complicating detection," security researchers Peter Girnus and Aliakbar Zahravi said in an analysis shared with The Hacker News. "The exploitation of ZDI-CAN-25373 exposes organizations to significant risks of data theft and cyber espionage." Specifically, this involves the padding of the arguments with Space (0x20), Horizontal Tab (0x09), Line Feed (0x0A),...