What are desktop.ini and target.lnk?

In my IIS/Win2k logs on a Web site, people have been attempting to run "desktop.ini" and "target.lnk." What are...

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these files? They're related to tracking shortcuts, and I can't think of any reason someone would request them from your Web site. I'm not aware that those files would be useful in a malicious attack. I just checked the logs on a busy public server, and didn't find any such requests, so it's not a common problem.

I could tell you more if you include the full log entries.

This was last published in May 2003

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