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What's a RAT? I've never heard of it, and I'm afraid it's an not a googleable word. Remote Administration Tool? Something like Intel vPro?

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They’re likely referring to a remote access trojan (malware) which likely shares many features of whatever administrative tool the IT team uses at that company.

Is there a fundamental difference between a remote administration tool and a remote access trojan?

Seems like roughly the same difference between a malware keylogger and say, X11. They both intercept all your keystrokes, but you wanted the latter one to do so and didn't want the former.

("But I didn't want the remote admin tool on my computer!" It's not your computer, it's the company's computer. And they wanted it there.)

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