Lumen's Mike Benjamin: An old RAT with new tricks

Lumen's Mike Benjamin joins the podcast to discuss the recent ReverseRAT update, a malware scheme that was used to target government and energy-sector organizations in India and Afghanistan.

"Ultimately, it's meant to be able to control a computer remotely," says Benjamin. "That could be everything from simple command execution, to file exfiltration, screen sharing, webcam control – anything you might want to do to a computer remotely fits under the RAT umbrella."

Benjamin and his team at Lumen's security research division, Black Lotus Labs, have been closely following the Remote Access Trojan (RAT) threat. The new iteration of ReverseRAT includes web camera access and the ability to steal files via USB drives, explains Benjamin.

In addition to explaining the new updates to this RAT, Benjamin shares steps enterprises can take to prevent and remediate these types of threats. He also provides insights into how users can take ownership over protecting their devices and how to get in the mindset of recognizing potential threats.

Check out our initial conversation with Benjamin about ReverseRAT here.

— Kelsey Kusterer Ziser, Senior Editor, Light Reading