LNK files
LNK files are automatically created by the Windows operating system once a user (or an attacker) opens a local or a remote file. These files can be found under the following locations:
C:\%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent\
C:\%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Office\Recent\
Among other data, such files contain the timestamps both for the LNK itself and the file it points to. It is the file that was opened (and may be deleted already, by the way).
Again, there's a tool for parsing such files, LECmd
:
As you can see in the screenshot, here we have evidence that the threat actors dumped LSASS – a very common technique for credentials access.
Let's look at another similar filesystem source of digital forensic artifacts – jump lists.