If you’re a fan of detective stories, you probably have read one of the first of the genre, “The Purloined Letter,” by Edgar Allan Poe. Briefly, a nefarious character has stolen a sensitive letter and is attempting to blackmail the victim. The authorities know he has it, so they raid his hotel room, turning over everything to find it. But they fail, because the thief has hidden it right out in the open, hanging from a tattered ribbon from the wall. Poe’s hero, detective C. Auguste Dupin, isn’t fooled by the ruse, but recovers the letter and gives it to the police for a reward.

Today, bad actors are taking a page from Poe’s tale, eschewing the hard work of creating sophisticated malware, and instead making use of Windows OS utilities and other commonly available tools, essentially hiding their work in plain sight in ways that make it easy to overlook.

The trend is called “living off the land.”