What is a keylogger? A keylogger is any software that actively monitors keystrokes on a device, a keyboard. A keylogger then has the potential to send that information back to a server somewhere. Recently a seemingly inactive keylogger was found inside of most recent models of HP devices. If you recall, back in May, there was a keylogger found in audio drivers as well, but this time it was found more directly in keyboard drivers. An update was issued to try to remove the keylogging code, but this could tarnish HP’s credibility. HP has been around since before the beginning of the Internet, a company so old and so trusted at making computers could do no wrong right? Wrong!

If we turn our eyes from HP alone, back in 2014, Lenovo was accused of bundling Superfish software with its PCs and laptops. The Superfish company was originally a software development company founded in Israel, but residing in Palo Alto, California. In 2015 the company further included a signed certificate with Superfish, but then Antivirus companies started to catch on to the issue and started devising definition packages to remove the offending software.

Toshiba, also a well known computer company, was found to harbor UEFI rootkits in its BIOS software. This was a lojack service for your computer, it was basically meant to be used as an anti-theft piece of software, however, it was vulnerable to outside attack. When users caught wind of this, Toshiba finally removed the rootkit from their future devices, but that damage to their name had already been done. Many people from that day continued to boycott such products.

In the case of the HP keylogger found recently, it was found in the keyboard driver and was assumed to be inactive by a researcher. The researcher was studying how the keyboard features worked when stumbling upon the string in the driver code. As with all of these mentioned bugs above, an update was issued for the keyboard driver and HP notebook owners have been urged to search the company’s website to see if there is an update available to them, but many are outraged, so we shall see how this plays out in favor of HP.

THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE: https://www.ghacks.net/2017/12/10/hp-releases-synaptics-driver-update-that-removes-disabled-keylogger/

https://thehackernews.com/2017/12/hp-laptop-keylogger.html

UNRELATED SHAMELESS PLUG:https://github.com/thedummy06/Helpful-Linux-Shell-Scripts

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