VanillaRAT

The VanillaRAT is a free-to-use open-source project hosted on GitHub. Its author says that it is written in C# and that anyone can use it as long as they are experienced enough to configure and compile it. Although the author states that the tool is meant to be used for educational purposes, it is probably a matter of time before low-level cybercriminals opt to take advantage of it and make it a part of their hacking toolkit.

The VanillaRAT is rather rich in features, and it is able to operate on the infected compute stealthily without causing any visible inconvenience for its victim. While the VanillaRAT is active, the remote attacker would be able to access all of its features such as:

• Remote desktop.
• Browse, download, upload and modify files.
• Manage Windows processes.
• Send text-to-speech messages.
• Open a chat box with the infected host.
• Log keystrokes.
• Load websites (visible or hidden Web browser instances).
• Hijack the Windows Clipboard.
• Access the victim's microphone.

However, it would seem that the VanillaRAT's development is far from finished – the author has included a to-do list, which reveals that they are planning on including a password collector module that may further enhance the VanillaRAT's abilities.

Since any cybercriminal can use the VanillaRAT, it is impossible to tell what propagation techniques they may opt to take advantage of. The best way to protect your computer against threats like this one is to ensure that you are always protected by a trustworthy anti-virus tool.