Orcus RAT Author Charged in Malware Scheme

In July 2016, KrebsOnSecurity published a story identifying a Toronto man as the author of the Orcus RAT, a software product that’s been marketed on underground forums and used in countless malware attacks since its creation in 2015. This week, Canadian authorities criminally charged him with orchestrating an international malware scheme.


An advertisement for Orcus RAT.



The accused, 36-year-old John “Armada” Revesz, has maintained that Orcus is a legitimate “Remote Administration Tool” aimed at helping system administrators remotely manage their computers, and that he’s not responsible for how licensed customers use his product.


In my 2016 piece, however, several sources noted that Armada and his team were marketing it more like a Remote Access Trojan, providing ongoing technical support and help to customers who’d purchased Orcus but were having trouble figuring out how to infect new machines or hide their activities online.


Follow-up reporting revealed that the list of features and plugins advertised for Orcus includes functionality that goes significantly beyond what one might see in a traditional remote administration tool, such as DDoS-for-hire capabilities, and the ability to disable the light indicator on webcams so as not to alert the target that the RAT is active.


Canadian investigators don’t appear to be buying Revesz’ claims. On Monday the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) announced it had charged Revesz with operating an international malware distribution scheme under the company name “Orcus Technologies.”


“An RCMP criminal investigation began in July 2016 after reports of a significant amount of computers were being infected with a ‘Remote Access Trojan’ type of virus,” the agency said in a statem ..

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