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Comment by jascii | Hacker News Reader

I don't think anyone seriously doubts the intended, arguable unethical, use of IM-RAT. The question is whether authoring and or selling these tools is or should be illegal. I'd argue that would set a dangerous precedent allowing governments to go after any security researchers whenever they feel it convenient to do so.

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I mean, there's probably more than enough intent here for prosecution. There's a fairly significant difference in selling a RAT that does remote administration, and selling a RAT that includes bulletpoint features to evade antivirus detection, persist through removals, and other features explicitly against the wishes of the device owner while the author actively and exclusively only advertises on script-kiddie forums and provides advice and encouragement of malicious infections.

I don't think I've ever seen people gone after for the former, even when it's been abused by miscreants.

At least in the US, people already "go after" security researchers all the time (at least the companies not smart enough to realise just how much a well meaning email can save them).

For what it's worth: I have tracked, managed, and recovered hundreds of devices using tools that were hardent against detection and removal at the express request of the device owners in enterprise, educational, and private settings. Mobile asset tracking is a thing. So yeah, there is a legitimate use for that too.

A key requirement under UK law is unauthorised access.

If someone explicitly asks you to hack their systems (and they have permission themselves), or if you want to do pentesting and hardening or your own systems, you should be fine.

The grey area here is how likely it is that someone would buy this tool for legitimate security analysis.

Most people wouldn't, which puts it on a slippery slope. A good defending lawyer should be able to make a good case for genuine legitimate use, but of course that's still going to leave some risk, not to mention a lot of stress and inconvenience before a case even gets to trial.

It is worth noting that there exists legitimate RATs that offer the bullet point features you've highlighted. The marketing issue is another problem entirely; these legitimate projects are usually open source on GitHub or posted on public blogs.

Your comments in this thread are fine and welcome, but trollish usernames are not ok. They troll every thread the account posts to: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....

Do you mind picking a non-trollish username and letting us rename it for you?

Sure. My apologies, didn't mean to offend - came from reddit. I'll take 'nested_callback' if it's available.

Ok, you are no longer EAT_ASS. You are now https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=nested_callback.

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