All About Blackshades, the Malware That Lets Hackers Watch You Through Your Webcam
Blackshades is the name of an organization allegedly owned by a Swedish 24-year-old named Alex Yücel. According to government officials, Yücel and Michael Hogue, a 23-year-old US citizen who was arrested in 2012 as part of the feds’ tangential investigation into Blackshades, codeveloped the Blackshades remote access tool (RAT). This tool, which sold for as little as $40 at bshades.eu and other sites, essentially allowed buyers to act as peeping Toms on strangers’ computers. The organization made more than $350,000 between September 2010 and April 2014, according to the FBI.
How does the Blackshades Remote Access Tool (RAT) work?
The Blackshades RAT isn’t any different than what your IT person at work uses to get remote access to your computer, explains Runa Sandvik, staff technologist at the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT). But if your IT department were accessing your computer, “you’d have a heads up,” she says. “In this case you won’t even know [the hacker] is on your computer.”
After buying a copy of the RAT software, a hacker has to install the program on a target’s computer, by, say, deceiving a person into clicking on a malicious link. Then, once the hacker has access to a computer, he or she can then use the RAT software to easily record a person’s keystrokes or passwords, take screenshots, rummage through computer files, or turn on the person’s web camera, according to the feds.
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More on how to detect at FBI.gov