Cyber criminals have been taking advantage of built-in Windows capabilities to mount disk image files once they are opened by the end user. There are multiple disk image file formats, but we have seen ISO and IMG files being abused the most.

I downloaded a game from OvaGames, one of the trusted sites in the megathread, and it's given me a .iso file, which my laptop describes as a "disc image file." What do I do with this, and how do I turn it into a playable game?

Not directly, but an ISO is a disc image - it could potentially contain files which could be viruses. Identical to how a ZIP file (or any other archive file format) could contain an infected file.

This disturbing find by a CERT researcher demonstrates how attackers can encode malicious files within a Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) image that acts in the same way as a ZIP archive.

Red Canary’s Detection Engineering team has observed an increase in adversaries using malicious disk images (specifically, .iso files) as a form of initial access. Rather than luring targets with the more commonly known .zip file, adversaries across the threat spectrum from ChromeLoader to Cozy Bear have started using a file format that many ...