Common Remote Access Trojans
- Sakula. Sakula is a seemingly benign software with a legitimate digital signature, yet it allows attackers complete remote administration capabilities over a machine.
- KjW0rm. KjW0rm is a worm written in VBS, which makes it difficult to detect on Windows machines. ...
- Havex. ...
- Agent.BTZ/ComRat. ...
- Dark Comet. ...
- AlienSpy. ...
- Heseber BOT. ...
- Back Orifice. ...
What is remote access trojan (RAT)?
What is Remote Access Trojan (RAT)? 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.
Is there a remote administration tool for Windows?
Windows Remote Administration Tool via Telegram. Written in Python A repository full of malware samples. TechNowHorse is a RAT (Remote Administrator Trojan) Generator for Windows/Linux systems written in Python 3. RAT-el is an open source penetration test tool that allows you to take control of a windows machine.
What is remote access toolkit malware?
This type of malware is designed to allow a hacker to remotely control a target machine, providing a level of access similar to that a remote system administrator. In fact, some RATs are derived from or based upon legitimate remote administration toolkits.
What is the Sakula Trojan?
Sakula, also known as Sakurel and VIPER, is another remote access trojan that first surfaced in November 2012. It was used in targeted intrusions throughout 2015. Sakula enables an adversary to run interactive commands and download and execute additional components.
Why are remote access Trojans important?
What is ICS malware?
What is PhoneSpector?
How does PhoneSpector work?
Is Androrat still used?
Do remote access Trojans exist?
See 3 more
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What is the best Remote Access Trojan?
Blackshades is a Trojan which is widely used by hackers to gain access to any system remotely. This tool frequently attacks the Windows-based operating system for access.
What is remote access in Trojan horse?
Remote access trojans (RATs) are malware designed to allow an attacker to remotely control an infected computer. Once the RAT is running on a compromised system, the attacker can send commands to it and receive data back in response.
Can remote access Trojans be detected?
As you might imagine, this can lead to sticky situations. A Remote Access Trojan paired with a keylogger, for instance, can easily acquire login information for bank and credit card accounts.
Which of the following is a remote Trojan?
Troya is a remote Trojan that works remotely for its creator.
How do I know if someone is accessing my computer remotely?
You can try any of these for confirmation.Way 1: Disconnect Your Computer From the Internet.Way 2. ... Way 3: Check Your Browser History on The Computer.Way 4: Check Recently Modified Files.Way 5: Check Your computer's Login Events.Way 6: Use the Task Manager to Detect Remote Access.Way 7: Check Your Firewall Settings.More items...•
How are remote access Trojans delivered?
A remote access Trojan (RAT) is a malware program that includes a back door for administrative control over the target computer. RATs are usually downloaded invisibly with a user-requested program -- such as a game -- or sent as an email attachment.
Can an Iphone get a remote access Trojan?
The iOS Trojan is smart and spies discretely, i.e. does not drain a battery. The RCS mobile Trojans are capable of performing all kinds of spying you can expect from such a tool, including location reporting, taking photos, spying on SMS, WhatsApp and other messengers, stealing contacts and so on.
What was the first remote access Trojan?
The oldest RAT was first developed in 1996 [10], however legitimate remote access tools were first created in 1989 [11]. Since then, the number of RATs has grown rapidly. The first phase was marked by home-made RATs. In these years, everyone made their own RAT, however these did not prosper and were not heavily used.
Which connection is most commonly used in RATs?
RAT infections are typically carried out via spear phishing and social engineering attacks. Most are hidden inside heavily packed binaries that are dropped in the later stages of the malware's payload execution.
What are the common backdoor?
7 most common application backdoorsShadowPad. ... Back Orifice. ... Android APK backdoor. ... Borland/Inprise InterBase backdoor. ... Malicious chrome and Edge extension backdoor. ... Backdoors in outdated WordPress plugins. ... Bootstrap-Sass Ruby library backdoor.
What is a backdoor Trojan?
Backdoor malware is generally classified as a Trojan. A Trojan is a malicious computer program pretending to be something it's not for the purposes of delivering malware, stealing data, or opening up a backdoor on your system.
Can you get a RAT on your phone?
RATs in Your Android It's well documented, freely available, and gives an attacker complete control over infected devices. There are even tutorials on how to use the RAT, and free, easy-to-use tools that will inject its malicious code into legitimate apps.
What is a backdoor Trojan?
Backdoor malware is generally classified as a Trojan. A Trojan is a malicious computer program pretending to be something it's not for the purposes of delivering malware, stealing data, or opening up a backdoor on your system.
Can an Iphone get a remote access Trojan?
The iOS Trojan is smart and spies discretely, i.e. does not drain a battery. The RCS mobile Trojans are capable of performing all kinds of spying you can expect from such a tool, including location reporting, taking photos, spying on SMS, WhatsApp and other messengers, stealing contacts and so on.
Which programming language is commonly used to create remote access Trojans?
For remote attacks on servers the Python language is popular among hackers.
How can I remotely access another computer over the Internet?
Set up remote access to your computerOn your computer, open Chrome.In the address bar, enter remotedesktop.google.com/access .Under “Set up Remote Access,” click Download .Follow the onscreen directions to download and install Chrome Remote Desktop.
What is RAT software?
RAT can also stand for remote administration tool, which is software giving a user full control of a tech device remotely. With it, the user can ac...
What’s the difference between the RAT computer virus and RAT software?
As for functions, there is no difference between the two. Yet, while remote administration tool is for legit usage, RAT connotes malicious and crim...
What are the popular remote access applications?
The common remote desktop tools include but are not limited to TeamViewer, AnyDesk, Chrome Remote Desktop, ConnectWise Control, Splashtop Business...
Top 6 Remote Access Trojans (RATs) - PrivacyCrypts
Hackers often access and control operating systems using remote access Trojans (RATs). Tools like these are available in abundance on the dark market. In this article, I am going to write about six popular breeds of RATs that cybercriminals use in the wild.
remote-access-trojan · GitHub Topics · GitHub
👻 RAT (Remote Access Trojan) - Silent Botnet - Full Remote Command-Line Access - Download & Execute Programs - Spread Virus' & Malware
Remote Access Trojan - GeeksforGeeks
History of Remote Access Trojan : This Remote Access Trojan popularity increased in the year of 2000s. In this period people didn’t have sufficient knowledge of how this virus spreads on the internet and what is antivirus?
How are Remote Access Trojans Useful to Hackers?
Attackers using remote control malware cut power to 80,000 people by remotely accessing a computer authenticated into SCADA (supervisor y control and data acquisition) machines that controlled the country’s utility infrastructure. RAT software made it possible for the attacker to access sensitive resources through bypassing the authenticated user's elevated privileges on the network. Having access to critical machines that control city resources and infrastructure is one of the biggest dangers of RAT malware.
Why do attackers use remote devices?
Instead of storing the content on their own servers and cloud devices, attackers use targeted stolen devices so that they can avoid having accounts and servers shut down for illegal content.
How to install a RAT?
An attacker must convince the user to install a RAT either by downloading malicious software from the web or running an executable from a malicious email attachment or message. RATs can also be installed using macros in Microsoft Word or Excel documents. When a user allows the macro to run on a device, the macro silently downloads RAT malware and installs it. With the RAT installed, an attacker can now remotely control the desktop, including mouse movement, mouse clicks, camera controls, keyboard actions, and any configured peripherals.
What is remote control software?
Legitimate remote-control software exists to enable an administrator to control a device remotely. For example, administrators use Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) configured on a Windows server to remotely manage a system physically located at another site such as a data center. Physical access to the data center isn’t available to administrators, so RDP gives them access to configure the server and manage it for corporate productivity.
What happens if you remove the internet from your computer?
Removing the Internet connection from the device disables remote access to your system by an attacker. After the device can no longer connect to the Internet, use your installed anti-malware program to remove it from local storage and memory. Unless you have monitoring configured on your computer, you won't know which data and files transferred to an attacker. You should always change passwords across all accounts, especially financial accounts, after removing malware from your system.
Can malware writers name processes?
For most applications and processes, you can identify any suspicious content in this window, but malware writers name processes to make them look official. If you find any suspicious executables and processes, search online to determine if the process could be a RAT or other type of malware.
How to protect yourself from remote access trojans?
Just like protecting yourself from other network malware threats, for remote access trojan protection, in general, you need to avoid downloading unknown items; keep antimalware and firewall up to date, change your usernames and passwords regularly; (for administrative perspective) block unused ports, turn off unused services, and monitor outgoing traffic.
What is a RAT trojan?
RAT trojan is typically installed on a computer without its owner’s knowledge and often as a trojan horse or payload. For example, it is usually downloaded invisibly with an email attachment, torrent files, weblinks, or a user-desired program like a game. While targeted attacks by a motivated attacker may deceive desired targets into installing RAT ...
What Does a RAT Virus Do?
Since a remote access trojan enables administrative control , it is able to do almost everything on the victim machine.
How does RAT malware work?
Once get into the victim’s machine, RAT malware will hide its harmful operations from either the victim or the antivirus or firewall and use the infected host to spread itself to other vulnerable computers to build a botnet.
Why is Darkcomet no longer available?
The reason is due to its usage in the Syrian civil war to monitor activists as well as its author’s fear of being arrested for unnamed reasons.
Why do RATs use a randomized filename?
It is kind of difficult. RATs are covert by nature and may make use of a randomized filename or file path structure to try to prevent identification of itself. Commonly, a RAT worm virus does not show up in the lists of running programs or tasks and its actions are similar to those of legal programs.
Is Sub 7 a trojan horse?
Typically, Sub 7 allows undetected and unauthorized access. So, it is usually regarded as a trojan horse by the security industry. Sub7 worked on the Windows 9x and Windows NT family of OSes, up to and including Windows 8.1. Sub7 has not been maintained since 2014. 4.
What are the key elements of a remote access trojan?
The two key elements of any remote access trojan are the client and the server . Additional elements may include the builder, plug-ins and crypter. In this context, a server is the program installed on the victim’s device, which is configured to connect back to the attacker. The client is the program used by the attacker to monitor and control infected victims: it allows the visualization of all active victim infections, displays general information about each infection, and allows individual actions to be performed manually on each victim.
How many remote access trojan families were there in 1996-2018?
Figure 1: Timeline of 337 well-known remote access trojan families during 1996-2018. They are ordered by the year in which they were first seen or reported by the community. The last decade clearly shows a significant growth compared with the previous 16 years.
What is remote access software?
Remote access software is a type of computer program that allows an individual to have full remote control of the device on which the software is installed. In this research we distinguish between remote access tool and remote access trojan. A remote access tool refers to a type of remote access software used for benign purposes, such as TeamViewer [1] or Ammyy Admin [2], which are common tools used by billions of users worldwide. Remote access trojans, referred to in this paper as RATs, are a special type of remote access software where (i) the installation of the program is carried out without user consent, (ii) the remote control is carried out secretly, and (iii) the program hides itself in the system to avoid detection. The distinction between tools and trojans was created by defenders to make clear the difference between benign and malicious RATs, however in the underground, attackers claim all RATs are remote access tools.
What is a builder in a RAT server?
The builder is a program used to create new RAT servers with different configurations. When attackers move infrastructure quickly, launch new attacks and require flexibility, builders save time and provide agility.
Why do attackers use crypters?
To be more efficient and hard to detect, attackers use crypters to make the RAT servers fully undetectable (FUD). Crypters are programs that take a given program, read the code, encrypt it with a key, and automatically create a new program that contains the encrypted code and key to decrypt it. Upon execution the key will be used to automatically decrypt the original program. Crypters are used to avoid detection by anti-virus engines.
Who is the operator in a RAT?
The operator (s) is the actor who purchases the software (or a licence) and carries out the attacks. This actor has the knowledge of who the target is, the possible scams or attacks that can be carried out with the software, and which characteristics are needed when purchasing a RAT.
Do RATs support plug-ins?
To add more capabilities to the existing RAT, some malware authors rely on plug-ins. This is not a widely used capability, however the most popular RATs support plug-ins. Good plug-ins are craved by the cybercrime community. These plug-ins are one of the main differentiators in terms of cost in the underground market.
When was remote access first used?
The oldest legitimate remote access software was built in the late 1980s, when tools such as NetSupport appeared. Soon after that, in 1996, their first malicious counterparts were created. NokNok and D.I.R.T. were among the first, followed by NetBus, Back Orifice and SubSeven.
Who was the law professor that was targeted by NetBus?
In 1999, someone downloaded NetBus and targeted Magnus Eriksson, a law professor at Lund University in Sweden. The attacker planted 12,000 pornographic images on his computer, 3,500 of which featured child pornography. The system administrators discovered them, and the law professor lost his job.
What is Gh0st used for?
Soon, they started to be used as part of more complex attacks by cybercriminals and state-sponsored attackers alike. There was a clear distinction between authors and operators, Valeros says. Gh0st was among the most prolific remote access trojans of its time.
What tools did RAT authors use in the 2000s?
In the 2000s, RAT authors were not naive kids who wanted to see how far they could go. Most of them were familiar with tools such as NetBus, SubSeven or Back Orifice, and they knew exactly what they were doing.
What was the Gh0st attack?
Gh0st is notorious for its part in the GhostNet Operation uncovered in 2009, which targeted political, economic, and media organizations in more than 100 countries. The attackers quietly infiltrated computer systems connected to embassies and government offices. Even Dalai Lama’s Tibetan exile centers in India, London, and New York City were hacked. According to several research papers, the malware collected information, encrypted it, and sent it to the command-and-control server.
Who created NetBus?
Yet, they were “innovative and disruptive,” Valeros says. NetBus, for instance, was created by Carl-Fredrik Neikter in 1998, and its name, translated from Swedish, means “NetPrank.”
Is NetBus a legit tool?
The developer claimed he didn’t want NetBus to be used maliciously, saying it was “a legit remote admin tool,” security researcher Seth Kulakow wrote in a paper he published with the SANS Institute. “However, if you didn’t already figure it out, it is still a very nice tool to use for the other purpose,” Kulakow wrote.
What is a Remote Access Trojan?
Sometimes referred to as a “remote administration tool” due to their similarity to legitimate IT admin tools like TeamViewer and LogMeIn, a remote access trojan is essentially a hidden backdoor into another user’s computer. This backdoor gives the person operating the RAT a whole range of different functions that can be used for malicious purposes, depending on which particular RAT platform they’re utilizing.
How Do Remote Access Trojans Spread?
As with most malware infections, RATs typically come through malspam, phishing and spearphishing campaigns. For example, a user may receive a phishing email carrying a malicious pdf or Word document, or the mail may contain a URL that takes the victim to a webpage for a fake software plugin and a message that a required tool is missing or needs updating. Adobe Flash, Adobe Reader and similar popular products are often spoofed for just this kind of trick due to their wide adoption across platforms.
How Do Threat Actors Use RATs Against The Enterprise?
While there’s certainly been cases of “lone wolf” actors targeting individuals and organizations and remaining undetected for over a decade, until recently the main threat to enterprise from RATs came from APT campaigns, including those targeting the most sensitive of installations such as a nuclear power plant in India (targeted by the DTrack RAT), oil and gas companies in the Middle East, telecoms across Africa and Asia ( DanBot RAT ), government agencies around the globe ( Calypso RAT ), and most recently an energy-sector organization in Europe ( PupyRAT ).
How Can CISOs Protect Against Remote Access Trojans?
In the past, RATs were difficult to develop and required a high degree of proficiency to operate. They were anything but “fire-and-forget” tools. They required threat actors to invest time and effort in inserting the malware into victims’ systems, manually operate the connection and then carry out whatever nefarious activities they had planned. As we have seen, things have changed more recently, and like other crimeware such as ransomware as a service, malware developers have seen and grasped the opportunity to make profit by selling easy access to tools that others do not have the skill to make for themselves.
How Do RATs Evade Detection?
RATS piggyback on the same remote access services that legitimate tools like TeamViewer use, exploiting Windows Remote Desktop (RDP) and TCP networking protocols to install a backdoor to the attacker’s own machine.
What is OLE in ODT?
In one of the campaigns targeting Microsoft Office users, the cybercriminals embedded an OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) in ODT documents to download the well-known remote access trojans (RATs).
Can ODT be used to target?
The two researchers believe that the use of less popular file formats such as ODT may increase the potential of specifically targeted attacks. Cybercriminals can check public records of organizations that switched to open-source Office suites and choose their targets from there.
Why are remote access Trojans important?
Remote Access Trojans fulfill an important function for hackers. Most attack vectors, like phishing, are ideal for delivering a payload to a machine but don’t provide the hacker with the ability to explore and interact with the target environment. RATs are designed to create a foothold on the target machine that provides the hacker with the necessary level of control over their target machine.
What is ICS malware?
Malware targeting industrial control systems (ICS) is nothing new, with big names like Stuxnet and Industroyer designed to cause physical damage. However, some ICS-focused malware is targeted at controlling critical infrastructure.
What is PhoneSpector?
PhoneSpector offers the hacker the ability to monitor a wide variety of activities on the device. This includes monitoring phone calls and SMS messages (even those that were deleted) as well as app activity. PhoneSpector even provides a customer service helpline in case a hacker gets in a bind. 4.
How does PhoneSpector work?
One of these is PhoneSpector, which bills itself as being designed to help parents and employers but acts like malware. The software can be installed by getting the device owner to click on a link and enter a product key on their device. It then monitors the device while remaining undetectable to the user.
Is Androrat still used?
Despite the age of the source code (last update in 2014), AndroRAT continues to be used by hackers. It includes the ability to inject its malicious code into legitimate applications, making it easy for a hacker to release a new malicious app carrying the RAT.
Do remote access Trojans exist?
Many different Remote Access Trojans exist, and some hackers will modify existing ones or develop their own to be better suited to their preferences. Different RATs are also designed for different purposes, especially with RATs geared specifically to each potential target (desktop versus mobile, Windows versus Apple and so on).