Everybody’s talking about the axios module being compromised today, with a RAT discovered in it. I wasn’t entirely sure what a RAT actually is, though I could probably guess. So I looked it up: RAT stands for Remote Access Trojan. That clears things up — it’s a trojan that allows remote access to the host machine, usually without the user’s authorization.
In other words, it’s a backdoor. Back in my earlier days, we used to create Windows installers that packaged a small random game together with a Back Orifice server and send them to friends as pranks. When they installed the game, the Back Orifice server would silently install on their machine. At that time, you could easily use an IP sniffer to discover the IP address of someone on your ICQ contact list — that is, your friend.
With the backdoor server running and the host IP in hand, it was just a click away to gain full access to their computer and pull off pranks like reversing mouse movement or randomly ejecting the CD-ROM drive.
I always knew Back Orifice was basically a backdoor or a trojan, but I had never come across the term “RAT.” Now I can put a name to it — it’s a RAT.