Tearing Apart the Undetected (OSX)Coldroot RAT
Comments on “Tearing Apart the Undetected (OSX)Coldroot RAT”
3 judges. Scored by all three judges. Only the day’s top stories get the claim check. How far stories are checked
The post walks through the reverse-engineering of com.apple.audio.driver.app, an unsigned, UPX-packed, Free Pascal-compiled macOS binary that references TCC.db to grant itself accessibility rights, masquerades as a document with a fake credential prompt, persists via a launch daemon, and beacons to a command server.
Why it ranked
No. 84 of 93 with a score of 0.56. The panel rated it highest on new information (0.95) and technical depth (0.94), lowest on audience breadth (0.42). The judges disagreed most on reader interest (spread 0.45), so the story is marked contested.
Every answer behind this is in the table under Score.
Score
0.56total under rubric v2.2Contestedjudges differ by 0.45 on reader interest
- Significance0.48
- Reader interest0.60
- Audience breadth0.42
- Practical relevance0.61
- Substantiated0.93
- Technical depth0.94
- New information0.95
- Counts against: Promotional0.10
- Counts against: Overclaim0.25
Each judge’s answer per question (0–1), their mean and spread, and what the question adds to the score (weight × mean).
| Question | Judge 1 | Judge 2 | Judge 3 | Mean | Spread | Weight | Contribution (weight times mean) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Significance | 0.48 | 0.35 | 0.62 | 0.48 | 0.27 | +0.24 | +0.116 |
| Reader interest | 0.33 | 0.70 | 0.78 | 0.60 | 0.45 , above the contested threshold | +0.26 | +0.157 |
| Audience breadth | 0.50 | 0.35 | 0.42 | 0.42 | 0.15 | +0.13 | +0.055 |
| Practical relevance | 0.50 | 0.60 | 0.72 | 0.61 | 0.22 | +0.22 | +0.133 |
| Substantiated | 0.97 | 0.90 | 0.91 | 0.93 | 0.07 | +0.05 | +0.046 |
| Technical depth | 0.99 | 0.90 | 0.94 | 0.94 | 0.09 | +0.05 | +0.047 |
| New information | 0.96 | 0.90 | 0.98 | 0.95 | 0.08 | +0.05 | +0.047 |
| Promotional | 0.06 | 0.05 | 0.18 | 0.10 | 0.13 | −0.19 | −0.018 |
| Overclaim | 0.42 | 0.10 | 0.22 | 0.25 | 0.32 | −0.11 | −0.027 |
| Sum of contributions | +0.557 | ||||||
| Claim-check penalty | 0.000 | ||||||
| Total, as published | 0.557 | ||||||
Spread is the highest minus the lowest judge answer. marks a spread above 0.40: the judges disagree, and the story is marked contested.
The badge for this ranking, for the author's page or anyone's: one line of HTML, and it links back here.
<a href="https://rubric.hrih.si/editions/2026-10-25/84/"><img src="https://rubric.hrih.si/badge/2026-10-25/84.svg" alt="Ranked #84 on Rubric, 25 Oct 2026" width="245" height="28"></a>Also covered by
No other coverage was clustered with this story.
Elsewhere
Elsewhere: HN —
Recorded for context only, checked 25 Oct 2026, 05:46 UTC. It played no part in the ranking.