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Keystroke Logging Increases
JamesAlfaro writes "Hackers are likely to release more than 6000 keylogging programs this year--up 65 percent from the number in 2004--according to Reston, Virginia, security vendor iDefense." From the article: "Each variant could lead to anything from a few to several thousand infections, Ken Dunham, senior engineer at iDefense, said. Keylogger software typically tracks keystrokes on infected computers and is used to try to steal sensitive information such as user names and credit card data. The biggest problem with keyloggers, which silently relay data to attackers, is that they often go undetected, easily slipping past firewalls and antivirus software, iDefense, a division of VeriSign, said. "
"Next year to be really, really scary on the computer security front", says a company which makes money from designing Comprehensive Solutions to Security Threats yet cannot decide whether keyloggers are silent but lethal or whether they have observable symptoms like a system slowdown (because you KNOW your 1 GHz Pentium just crawls when it tries to do processor-intensive tasks like parsing keyboard input). Honestly, these kind of folks give security research a bad name. Its like the doctor down the street who says "Hey, AIDS cases are likely to increase next year -- symptoms include coughing or feeling less energetic than you usually do. Be afraid!"
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
The first line of defense against these things is avoiding the trap of downloading things that may contain them. Same old saw: don't download anything from people you don't know or trust. Don't open suspicious emails. Problem is, no matter how much you say it, the common computer-user doesn't heed the warnings. People are too gullible for their own good and there are so many get-rich-quick, boy-that-sounds-interesting types out there that its only a matter of time before one of these things spreads
Of course, what the article fails to mention is the corporate use of keyloggers, to see just what you've been saying on Slashdot, or worse, the number of people who install them on purpose to trap an unwary spouses or their mischievous kids.
Ultimately, we should all be installing anti-keylogging software right along with our anti-virus. That will work, until the forces of evil come up with the next generation of spyware.
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Why spend actual money (even a low-end PC costs you what, a couple hundred dollars) just because of the hype, especially when you know darn well the likelihood of it ever getting booted up is zilch (particularly if technologically less-than-savvy people get an urgent "Don't wait, update your account information today!" email in their inbox -- which, incidentally, leaves them 100% as screwed no matter what Linux distribution you're using)
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
For the moment it's fairly easy to find out when a machine has spyware. What would scare me is when a decent programmer will start to write such programs so that it is completely stealth and doesn't bring the machine to a grinding halt.
... It's not as easy as you say to find out when a machine has spyware.
And what make you think it's not aldready happenned ? Maybe you're just not aware of it now.
The Sony rootkit has been running on thousands of computers for months without anyone to notice it
wtf.n0x.org
Next step was to send the DarkSingh chap an email telling him what a cunt he is :-)
That'll teach him. Filing an incident report with the authorities to MAYBE get him caught (so he cannot compromise other people's computers) would have had a bit more long term vision.
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