In early 2017 I started a personal research on Remote Access Trojans (RATs). The goal of the research is to discover possible trends, similarities and other hidden aspects among RATs observed during the last 30 years.

For this purpose I divided the research in several stages. The goal of the first stage is to create a timeline of RATs with all the existing families in the last 30 years. In order to achieve this goal, I am following an iterative methodology:

For every RAT collect all meaningful blogs and reports about it.

Document the resources found.

Find the first mention of the RAT and determine a possible year of appearance.

Check the resources for other possible RAT names.

Repeat.

Because there is a huge lack of formal research on this area, I decided to create small iterations of my timeline and make it public in order to receive early feedback from peers. In this way, I could get assistance, suggestions and corrections in the early stage of my research that will ensure bigger chances of success for next stages of the research.

A Study of RATs: First Timeline Iteration

The first timeline iteration was made public on Jan 22, 2017. This initial version covered 19 years and 85 RATs.