What do you know about RATS?
They appear in your house without any invitation. They stay and carry out all their life cycle in your house and they do this SILIENTLY!
A remote access Trojan (RAT) is a malware program that opens a backdoor, enabling administrative control over the victim’s computer.
RATs are typically downloaded together with a seemingly legitimate program, like a game, or are sent to the target as an email
attachment( carefully check the link before you click on it).
Just like the Rats in our houses, a remote access trojan can exits well before detection and even remain after removal. ( Just like that Rat that died and has been smelling for days).
Once the attacker compromises the host’s system, they can use it to distribute RATs to additional vulnerable computers, establishing a botnet.
Here are several ways a RAT attack can endanger individual users, organizations, or even entire populations:
- Spying and blackmail—an attacker who deploys RAT on a user’s device gains access to its cameras and microphones. They can take photos of the user and their environment, use it to conduct more sophisticated attacks, or to blackmail the user.
- Launching distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks—when attackers have RATs deployed on a large number of user devices, they can use these devices to flood a target server with fake traffic. Users are commonly unaware that their devices are used for DDoS, although an attack can result in network performance degradation.
- Cryptomining—attackers can use a RAT to mine Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency on a user’s computer. By scaling their operation across a large number of devices, they can generate significant earnings.
