Spy Review

Keyloggers capture what a user types in on a computer keyboard for retrieval at a later date. Clearly, as with anything, there are good ways to use keyloggers, and not so good ways. From your own perspective, keyloggers can be used for data and password theft. Therefore being able to find and detect a keylogger on your own system is definitely a worthwhile skill.

A software keylogger is a stealth piece of computer software that will record keystrokes to a log file stored somewhere on the computer’s hard drive. Sophisticated versions of software keyloggers will email logs periodically to a designated email address, or upload them via FTP to a remote server.

A hardware keylogger is a tiny gadget about 2cm in length that sites between the cable and socket of a computer keyboard. The device is completely undetectable by software since its physically connected to the keyboard. The device contains a tiny chip of memory, which can store several thousand raw keystrokes as typed on the keyboard. There are both USB and PS/2 keyloggers available on the market. USB keyboards are taking over as being the most popular types of keyboards, and this has been matched by new USB keyloggers hitting the market.

Hardware keyloggers require physical access to a machine to be installed. Software keyloggers can be installed remotely, but some kind of backdoor or remote access is required first. With some programming skill, software keyloggers can be very covertly installed by hiding the keylogger in a program that the user installs themselves. Software keyloggers obviously require that the computer is switched on for the keylogger to be installed, but a hardware keylogger is simply installed by plugging it in.

Hardware keyloggers are probably the easiest keyloggers to detect if they look like the ‘adaptor’ as pictured above. However, a hardware keylogger hidden in a keyboard is extremely difficult to detect without actually opening up the keyboard itself! Software keyloggers can be detected by good quality anti-virus products, but can be very difficult to detect by humans (without using software tools).

As with any surveillance device, the one you choose depends on the application. Hopefully the explanation of the differences of the two types above will help you decide which version is most appropriate for you.