Keylogger or not?

Mooncat · Post by **Mooncat** » Wed Sep 23, 2009 8:56 pm

My son was dismantling an Acer laptop,which had a duff CPU along with a failing hard disk. Connected between the keyboard and the Ethernet adaptor was a small circuit board with a flash memory chip plus others. After some searching he found this URL:
http://hardtruth.navhost.com/keylogger.html
Are the claims that the extra circuit sends keystroke details to the US government true? He had to do a lot of dismantling before he found it, so it wouldn't be found by a casual user.

Post by **ultimatehandyman** » Wed Sep 23, 2009 9:07 pm

I have often said that it would be a piece of cake to hide such technology inside of a pc.

Mobile phone technology is the same, big brother could easily be spying on you.

I remember years ago reading an article about phone tapping, where it was possible to listen in on any room where there was a telephone, even if it was on the hook still

DIY_Johnny · Post by **DIY_Johnny** » Wed Sep 23, 2009 9:30 pm

would surprise me. When I worked in IT, lots of lads worked for the MoD. A few beers in the pub and the stories would come out about what they were working on. I never got any clearance to work on anything in MoD

Big one was MoD installing car registeration readers in traffic lights. Idea was that the software tracks cars and detects unusual patterns

I kid you not!

Post by **ultimatehandyman** » Wed Sep 23, 2009 9:32 pm

I know a guy and his wife makes tracking devices for cars in the USA. These are not for navigation, but for positioning the vehicles and the drivers are not aware of them

Apparently they are fitted in all new cars in the US.

dave.m · Post by **dave.m** » Wed Sep 23, 2009 9:43 pm

Don't panic, it is not as suspected:

http://www.snopes.com/computer/internet/dellbug.asp

and from this site:

http://www.dansdata.com/keyghost.htm

I wrote this review way back in 2000. Some time in 2005, somebody decided to use the above section of the review, including the pictures, in a hoax story about "Dell Keyloggers". The story alleges that the above hardware was being hidden in Dell laptops, and who knows where else, at the order of the US Department of Homeland Security.

This is, of course, nonsense. But as of early 2009 the bogus story is still all over the Web, sometimes in the deluxe edition that includes my pictures too. There's a Snopes page about it, as well.

dave.m · Post by **dave.m** » Thu Sep 24, 2009 9:41 pm

I cannot find out exactly what the bit of hardware is or what it does but it seems to be someone has started a panic with a hoax fictional story.

It seems funny that it was started about nine years ago and has resurfaced but without any explanation of what the thing actually does.

dave