Introduction: Gaining remote control of a system—without the owner’s knowledge or consent—has become more feasible with the rise of hybrid work and the popularity of remote-access tools. At Detective Hacker we track the surge in Remote Access Trojans (RATs), and the direct exploitation of protocols such as RDP or VNC has dramatically expanded the attack surface.
| Vector | Practical description |
|---|---|
| Exploitation of vulnerabilities in RDP / Remote Desktop Gateway | Buffer overflows, heap errors, or default credentials. |
| Brute force & credential stuffing | Use of leaked combinations from the dark web against RDP, SSH, or VNC. |
| Remote Access Trojans (RAT) | Malicious software that opens a persistent channel (HTTP, WebSocket, DNS-tunnel). |
| Abuse of legitimate software (RMM as malware) | Misconfigured or pirated AnyDesk, Atera, ConnectWise Control. |
| Advanced social engineering | “Tech-support” emails that lure users into installing remote binaries or sharing an OTP code. |
run key in the registry.SYSTEM token or an LPE vulnerability.svchost32.exe)..duckdns.org, .ngrok.io, or *.trycloudflare.com.HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run.ConfuserEx, Obsidium, or YARA signatures of modified UPX packers.Review the disclaimer on our website: https://detectivehacker.org/hacker-detective/
