Brute Ratel v2.3 (codename Flux) is now available for download. A key focus of this release was complete redevelopment of the Badger implant using a custom-built compiler, designed to improve operational security (OpSec) and significantly reduce its memory footprint. During development, I noticed several limitations in the existing MinGW and Clang toolchains, particularly in how they handle certain memory regions and stack layouts. To address these issues, the MinGW/Clang compiler provided limited support, as ideally, these are not options that a general developer would ideally want to mess with. But the built-in optimizations were a tad bit problematic when dealing with my stealth requirements. Thus, I ended up creating a tailored variant, capable of optimizing the Badger’s compilation process to meet the required stealth requirements. As a result, the size of the full Badger implant has been reduced by 30% in this release, with further reductions expected to reach around 60% in the next iteration — all while retaining the full feature set.
