IM-RAT, which could be had for as little as US$25, was bought by nearly 15,000 people
Law enforcement authorities in a number of countries have broken up a cybercriminal operation that peddled a notorious Remote Access Trojan (RAT) capable of giving anyone with ill intentions total control over compromised machines, according to announcements by Europol, the United Kingdom’s National Crime Agency (NCA) and the Australian Federal Police (AFP).
If installed undetected, the insidious tool – dubbed ‘Imminent Monitor RAT’ (IM-RAT) – made it possible for the crook to “disable anti-malware software, carry out commands such as recording keystrokes, steal data and passwords and watch the victims via their webcams”, obviously all without the victim’s knowledge or consent.
The malware was sold for as little as US$25 via the now-removed website imminentmethods.net. As has been true in similar cases, IM-RAT was marketed as a legitimate remote desktop utility.
In all, the full-featured spy tool was bought by no fewer than 14,500 people in 124 countries, whereas victims are in the tens of thousands. Importantly, according to the NCA, with the IM-RAT infrastructure now taken down, the malware can no longer be used by the buyers.
The takedown notice on the now-seized IM-RAT website
“The IM RAT was used by individuals and organized crime groups in the UK to commit a range of offenses ..
Support the originator by clicking the read the rest link below.
