How hackers can switch on your webcam and control your computer

The 14-year-old couldn't believe his eyes. The virtual currency he'd worked so hard to amass in the online role-playing game Runescape had vanished. He'd lost the equivalent of $700 in the blink of an eye, after investing his pocket money into the game's economy for months. All that remained was an instant message dialogue box: "Haha, you got RATted!"

Sitting in his bedroom in Wauchope, on the mid-north coast of NSW, the teenager wrote back: "What does that mean?" He didn't know at the time that his machine had been compromised by a Remote Administration Tool (RAT), an aggressive form of malware that allows hackers to access a victim's entire computer. It was too late. The thief had disappeared. "He ran away with my money, like a girl," laments Alex (not his real name).