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RAT

Kaolin RAT

aka KaolinTea

Kaolin RAT is a complex modular RAT, with Release_TMain_x64.dll as its internal DLL name.

Kaolin RAT is a complex modular RAT, with Release_TMain_x64.dll as its internal DLL name.

The malware provides standard backdoor functionality, including manipulation and listing of files and processes, exchanging the configuration, collecting the victim’s system info, opening a TCP connection, and executing local commands and collecting their outputs.

Also, it is designed to execute additional DLL payloads in memory via specific exported functions:

  • _DoMyFunc,
  • _DoMyFunc2,
  • _DoMyThread,
  • _DoMyCommandWork.

Functionally, Kaolin RAT relies on an accompanying trojanized curl library to handle network and exfiltration operations, by importing functions such as:

  • SendDataFromURL,
  • ZipFolder,
  • UnzipStr,
  • curl wrappers.

For C&C communication, it employs AES encryption and attempts to evade network detection by randomly selecting words from a hardcoded custom dictionary to populate POST request parameters. The malware's name is derived from one of these dictionary words ("kaolin").

The Kaolin RAT has been observed in Lazarus campaigns as a late-stage payload — typically following loaders like RollFling, RollSling, and RollMid — and serves also as a delivery vector for the FudModule rootkit with a 0-day exploit.


Family metadata imported from Malpedia (Fraunhofer FKIE).