Is there a way to tell if you have a keystroke program (trojan) installed
on your computer?
Is there any indication that it has been installed? Or where would you look?
I assume, that it would be difficult or maybe impossible to detect.
But I am curious. I saw this article on Drudge this morning and seems the
crooks are ahead of the good guys.
"Bank firewalls cracked by cyberhackers"
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0890892c-e...44feab49a.html
You could try and install some up-to-date antivirus software. AVG, AVAST, Microsoft Security Essentials, are all free.
If you become really astute, you can go into the registry yourself to try and find problems...
What Operating System are you running?
I use Windows XP and have AVG installed and up-to-date. I was curious
how you would detect a keystroke program tho. I have no desire to go
into the registry and play or look. Click on the wrong thing in there and
mess things up royally. Do these keystroke programs give any indication
that they are residing on your computer and sending information to
someone?
If it is a physical tracker, like a USB/miniDIN pass-through dongle, you can just remove it. Otherwise, those programs usually put some kind of 'hidden file' on the computer in an obscure place, or they have a hidden hard drive par ion they access. I would imagine you could use the system analyzer to check memory usage and CPU utilization, but that process probably wouldn't take up much of either.
If you cancel all processes you don't recognize, (assuming the processes 'let' you cancel them) you might be able to detect a rouge program.
Sorry, that's the best I can do.
If its a persistent Key logger, its probably in your startup programs.
Click start then Run. type msconfig and navigate to the startup tab. See if there is anything there that looks fishy. It will tell you what directory its located in and what registry key its under. Using MSconfig isnt like messing with the registry. If you uncheck something, the worse that will happen is that the program wont start. You can always go back in and check it again. It's pretty rare that these things run as an actual registered system process.
If your not that savy or not sure whats legit or not, you can try running something like Malwarebytes which is a free malware program.
You can also download hijackthis and have it run, then post what it reports here, I can try to take a look at it and tell you if anything looks fishy.
Last edited by phyzik; 12-13-2009 at 11:49 PM.
keylogger
when u about to put in the keys, if ur comp is laggin or running a bit slow compared to the other times u loggin ur key, that means the key logger is activated, either you format ur comp imo....alot of mmorpgs get their accounts hacked cause they dl hacks or pronz that contain keyloggers....
you're screwed. just burn your computer and buy a new one
A keylogger requires very little in resources. It is very doubtful that you would notice any speed difference.
There are two scenarios, but nothing easy.
1. The keylogger sends your info over the internet. For this situation, you need software or another computer examining all the packets that are being sent out on your network and a way of identifying legitimate packets. Good internet security software should be able to do this, but I don't have directions for you. This will slow down your computer much more than any keylogger, BTW.
2. The keylogger stores your info on the computer. Later another user of the computer examines what you have been typing. Presumably, the info is being added to some file somewhere, so you need software that will find all files that have been recently changed. Again, you need some way to separate the legitimate changes. Then you maybe could search for a particular text you typed in these files if the keylogger didn't encrypt or recode your input.
Easy to make these spyware so hidden, they are almost impossible to discover.
The article is mostly fear-mongering. The latest and greatest hacks are not aimed at random users. By the time something is in the wild and likely to infect you, your security software would be up to date on finding the right signature. This cutting-edge stuff is aimed at businesses, not end-users. They'd have their security audited by a pro anyways if they were afraid.
Any software with heuristics can probably find keyloggers since they all pretty much just hook onto the OS's function calls. The most likely run-in with a keylogger is through a flash player exploit or cross site scripting. Stay away from sites that you don't trust and use security software.
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