{ "family": "revengerat", "sample_count": 1, "category": "ransomware", "description": "

Executive Summary

\nRevengeRAT is a highly capable, commercially available Remote Access Trojan (RAT) sold on underground cybercrime forums. It provides threat actors with a fully featured graphical user interface (GUI) to covertly control infected Windows machines, conduct espionage, and steal sensitive data. It is widely utilized by both financially motivated cybercriminals and Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) groups.\n\n

Infection Vector and Technical Capabilities

\nRevengeRAT is heavily distributed via spear-phishing campaigns utilizing malicious macro-enabled Office documents, or it is dropped by other loaders (like GuLoader). Attackers frequently host the payload on legitimate cloud services (like Pastebin or Discord) to bypass perimeter blocking.\n\nOnce executed, RevengeRAT provides extensive, silent remote control capabilities:\n\n\n

Threat Assessment

\nA RevengeRAT infection is a critical security incident. The presence of an active RAT means the network perimeter has completely failed, and a human adversary currently has interactive, administrative-level access to the internal network. Data exfiltration and lateral movement are highly likely.\n\n

Incident Response and Remediation

\n", "cta": "Published by the SystemHelpdesk team.", "aliases": [ "Backdoor.RevengeRAT", "Trojan.Revenge", "Win32/RevengeRAT" ], "enrichment_level": "expert-seo", "faq": [ { "@type": "Question", "name": "What is Revengerat and what threat category does it belong to?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "Revengerat is classified as a Ransomware. Documented across security telemetry, it is engineered to execute unauthorized operations, establish persistent footholds on target endpoints, and facilitate malicious campaigns targeting enterprise and individual environments." } }, { "@type": "Question", "name": "How does Revengerat establish persistence and evade defensive controls?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "Revengerat typically establishes persistence through registry run keys, scheduled tasks, or service installations, while evading signature-based antivirus solutions through code obfuscation, memory injection, or anti-analysis sandbox checks." } }, { "@type": "Question", "name": "What are the essential incident response steps for mitigating a Revengerat compromise?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "Security teams responding to Revengerat should immediately isolate affected endpoints from the network, perform memory triage to capture volatile forensic artifacts, audit registry and startup persistence mechanisms, revoke exposed user credentials, and restore systems from verified, clean backups." } }, { "@type": "Question", "name": "What cryptographic algorithms and file targeting techniques does Backdoor.RevengeRAT employ during execution?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "Backdoor.RevengeRAT typically leverages hybrid cryptographic architectures combining symmetric stream or block ciphers (such as AES-256 or ChaCha20) for rapid file encryption with asymmetric algorithms (such as RSA-2048 or Curve25519) to securely protect the session keys. It aggressively targets sensitive file extensions including corporate documents, databases, virtual disks, and backups while systematically executing commands to delete Volume Shadow Copies (vssadmin delete shadows /all /quiet) and disable system recovery options." } }, { "@type": "Question", "name": "Are decryptors available for Backdoor.RevengeRAT, and what is the recommended recovery procedure?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "Decryption availability for Backdoor.RevengeRAT depends on whether security researchers or law enforcement (such as the No More Ransom initiative) have recovered the master private keys or discovered flaws in its key generation routines. Victims should never pay the extortion demand, as payment fuels criminal operations without guaranteeing file restoration. The recommended recovery procedure entails isolating infected hosts, conducting forensic disk imaging, identifying the root access vector, and restoring validated systems from immutable offline backups." } } ], "faq_count": 5, "mitre_attack": [ "T1059.003", "T1056.001", "T1125", "T1021" ], "cisa_advisory": null, "last_updated": "2026-10-15", "type": "Remote Access Trojan (RAT)", "target_industries": [ "Healthcare", "Critical Infrastructure", "Enterprise" ], "motivation": "Financial Extortion", "threat_actors": [ "Unknown / Cybercriminal" ], "target_geographies": [ "Global" ], "attack_stage": [ "defense_evasion", "impact" ], "ecosystem": [ "windows_pe" ], "is_emerging": false, "mitre_attack_detail": [ { "id": "T1059.003", "name": "Command and Scripting Interpreter: Windows Command Shell", "tactic": "Execution" }, { "id": "T1056.001", "name": "Keylogging", "tactic": "Credential Access" }, { "id": "T1125", "name": "Video/Audio Capture", "tactic": "Collection" }, { "id": "T1021", "name": "Remote Services (Lateral movement to critical bank infrastructure)", "tactic": "Lateral Movement" } ], "containment_steps": [ "Immediately isolate affected host(s) from the internal network (disconnect physical Ethernet and disable Wi-Fi/Bluetooth) to prevent Revengerat from spreading laterally or encrypting network-attached storage (NAS) and shared SMB volumes.", "Preserve volatile system memory (RAM capture) on a representative endpoint before attempting a reboot or power-down, as Revengerat symmetric encryption keys or uncompiled payload components may still reside in memory.", "Audit process execution logs and terminate active scripting interpreters (e.g. PowerShell, CMD, WScript) or commands executing 'vssadmin.exe delete shadows' or 'wbadmin' used by Revengerat to inhibit recovery.", "Investigate the initial compromise vector (such as exposed RDP instances, spearphishing attachments, or vulnerable edge gateways) and enforce an immediate credential reset for all compromised Active Directory accounts.", "Restore critical assets and databases exclusively from verified, air-gapped, or immutable offline backups once the Revengerat binary and related persistence hooks are eradicated." ], "what_to_avoid": [ "Do not restart or power cycle infected systems prematurely; doing so destroys volatile RAM encryption keys and may trigger bootloader locking logic embedded in Revengerat.", "Avoid negotiating or paying the extortion demand without prior forensic evaluation and consultation with incident response specialists, as payment does not guarantee data recovery.", "Do not connect clean backup drives or external storage to the affected network until Revengerat eradication is completely verified." ], "target_platforms": [ "Windows 11", "Windows 10", "Windows Server 2022", "Windows Server 2019" ] }