Remote Access Trojans (RATs) are a persistent class of malware that give an attacker direct, interactive access to a victim’s personal computer, allowing the attacker to steal private data, spy on the victim in real-time using the camera and microphone, and verbally harass the victim through the speaker. To date, the users and victims of this pernicious form of malware have been challenging to observe in the wild due to the unobtrusive nature of infections. In this work, we report the results of a longitudinal study of the DarkComet RAT ecosystem. Using a known method for collecting victim log databases from DarkComet controllers, we present novel techniques for tracking RAT controllers across hostname changes and improve on established techniques for filtering spurious victim records caused by scanners and sandboxed malware executions. We downloaded 6,620 DarkComet databases from 1,029 unique controllers spanning over 5 years of operation. Our analysis shows that there have been at least 57,805 victims of DarkComet over this period, with 69 new victims infected every day; many of whose keystrokes have been captured, actions recorded, and webcams monitored during this time. Our methodologies for more precisely identifying campaigns and victims could potentially be useful for improving the efficiency and efficacy of victim cleanup efforts and prioritization of law enforcement investigations.

Remote Access Trojans (RATs) give remote attackers interactive control over a compromised machine. Unlike large-scale malware such as botnets, a RAT is controlled individually by a human operator interacting with the compromised machine remotely. The versatility of RATs makes them attractive to actors of all levels of sophistication: they've been used for espionage, information theft, voyeurism and extortion. Despite their increasing use, there are still major gaps in our understanding of RATs and their operators, including motives, intentions, procedures, and weak points where defenses might be most effective. In this work we study the use of DarkComet, a popular commercial RAT. We collected 19,109 samples of DarkComet malware found in the wild, and in the course of two, several-week-long experiments, ran as many samples as possible in our honeypot environment. By monitoring a sample's behavior in our system, we are able to reconstruct the sequence of operator actions, giving us a unique view into operator behavior. We report on the results of 2,747 interactive sessions captured in the course of the experiment. During these sessions operators frequently attempted to interact with victims via remote desktop, to capture video, audio, and keystrokes, and to exfiltrate files and credentials. To our knowledge, we are the first large-scale systematic study of RAT use.

Recent trends in aviation have led many general aviation pilots to adopt the use of iPads (or other tablets) in the cockpit. While initially used to display static charts and documents, uses have expanded to include live data such as weather and traffic information that is used to make flight decisions. Because the tablet and any connected devices are not a part of the onboard systems, they are not currently subject to the software reliability standards applied to avionics. In this paper, we create a risk model for electronic threats against mobile cockpit information systems and evaluate three such systems popular with general aviation pilots today: The Appareo Stratus 2 receiver with the ForeFlight app, the Garmin GDL~39 receiver with the Garmin Pilot app, and the SageTech Clarity CL01 with the WingX Pro7 app. We found all three to be vulnerable, allowing an attacker to manipulate information presented to the pilot, which in some scenarios would lead to catastrophic outcomes. Finally, we provide recommendations for securing such systems.