Windows Link Files Using While Loops A colleague asked today about a tool to decode Microsoft Windows link files. Before I begin to discuss the tool I recommended, Ill briefly describe Windows link files. A Windows link file, commonly known as "shortcuts", has the .lnk extension. It is basically a file with information about another file. It is interpreted by the windows shell, and the shell opens the file pointed to by the link file if all goes well. Link files can be user or system generated. You can learn much more about Windows link files in the white paper by Harry Parsonage. My favorite tool for parsing Windows link files was created by Jake Cunningham who posts tools he creates at the "JAFAT: Archive of Forensic Analysis Tools" website. Jake has created some very well know Safari browser tools, but the tool that has caught my eye is "lnk-parse-1.0.pl". The lnk-parse tool is a perl script that provides the most de...