Money-eating cash machine RAT gobbles $17,500 | Tech News

In the field of cybersecurity, some words that started off as outright jargon are now in common use because they are just so meaningfully appropriate.

The word RAT, short for Remote Access Trojan, is a good example.

A RAT is a malware program that is specifically designed to open up a hidden backdoor on your computer so that crooks can get back in later – like a window that’s surreptitiously unlatched by a sneaky visitor so an accomplice can break in at night and make off with your valuables.

Sometimes, the data targeted by a RAT is sleazy – as in the the case in which Miss Teen USA and 150 other young women were photographed covertly by a creep using a RAT to control their webcams.

And sometimes the purpose is plain avarice – as in so-called banking RATs that give crooks access to bank accounts or cash machines from an insider position.

RATs aren’t just a Windows problem, either, because RATs are both possible and known on platforms such as macOS and Linux, too.