Security News > 2022 > January > UK jails man for spying on teenagers, stealing photos using RATs
A Nottingham man was imprisoned this week for more than two years after hacking the computers and phones of dozens of victims, some of them underage, and spying on them using remote access trojans.
32-year-old Robert Davies used fake online social media profiles and Skype accounts for catfishing his victims and hacking their devices by sending links that allowed him to infect them with RATs obfuscated using crypters.
"He then used the RATs to gain remote access to their devices and steal any sexual images they had stored on there," the UK National Crime Agency said in a press release.
Davies used his access to victims' computers and phones to steal and build an extensive collection of indecent images of adults and children.
Davies only landed on NCA's radar after investigators spotted him buying various cybercrime tools online, including the RATs and crypters he later used to compromise and remotely access his victims' devices.
"Not only was he using these tools to break in to peoples' devices, he was using them to spy on his unsuspecting victims and to steal naked images of them for his own sexual gratification."