Taylor Huddleston

April 4, 2017

Dual-Use Software Criminal Case Not So Novel

This post was originally published on this site“He built a piece of software. That tool was pirated and abused by hackers. Now the feds want him to pay for the computer crooks’ crimes.” The above snippet is the subhead of a story published last month by the The Daily Beast titled, “FBI Arrests Hacker Who Hacked No One.” The subject of that piece — a 26-year-old American named Taylor Huddleston — faces felony hacking charges connected to two computer programs he authored and sold: An anti-piracy product called Net Seal, and a Remote Administration Tool (RAT) called NanoCore that he says was a benign program […]
February 27, 2018

Bot Roundup: Avalanche, Kronos, NanoCore

This post was originally published on this siteIt’s been a busy few weeks in cybercrime news, justifying updates to a couple of cases we’ve been following closely at KrebsOnSecurity. In Ukraine, the alleged ringleader of the Avalanche malware spam botnet was arrested after eluding authorities in the wake of a global cybercrime crackdown there in 2016. Separately, a case that was hailed as a test of whether programmers can be held accountable for how customers use their product turned out poorly for 27-year-old programmer Taylor Huddleston, who was sentenced to almost three years in prison for making and marketing a […]
July 16, 2018

‘LuminosityLink RAT’ Author Pleads Guilty

This post was originally published on this siteA 21-year-old Kentucky man has pleaded guilty to authoring and distributing a popular hacking tool called “LuminosityLink,” a malware strain that security experts say was used by thousands of customers to gain unauthorized access to tens of thousands of computers across 78 countries worldwide. The LuminosityLink Remote Access Tool (RAT) was sold for $40 to thousands of customers, who used the tool to gain unauthorized access to tens of thousands of computers worldwide. Federal prosecutors say Colton Ray Grubbs of Stanford, Ky. conspired with others to market and distribute the LuminosityLink RAT, a $40 Remote […]
November 13, 2019

Orcus RAT Author Charged in Malware Scheme

This post was originally published on this siteIn July 2016, KrebsOnSecurity published a story identifying a Toronto man as the author of the Orcus RAT, a software product that’s been marketed on underground forums and used in countless malware attacks since its creation in 2015. This week, Canadian authorities criminally charged him with orchestrating an international malware scheme. An advertisement for Orcus RAT. The accused, 36-year-old John “Armada” Revesz, has maintained that Orcus is a legitimate “Remote Administration Tool” aimed at helping system administrators remotely manage their computers, and that he’s not responsible for how licensed customers use his product. […]