Beware of the keylogger

Have you checked your mail from a Net cafe on a public computer? Or even worse, have you performed online banking transactions on one? If you have, chances are somebody could have access to your email inbox, or your bank accout! Shocked? You should be. New research from iDefense shows that usage of keylogger programmers are on the rise, upto 65% from last year.

Keylogger software

Keyloggers are basically small programs that run as a background task in the operating system, and thus, invisible to the user. Once installed, they monitor and record every keystroke that is input by the user, and stores them in a file somewhere, neatly categorised by time, date and the window receiving the input. The file may be then be later sent to an email address of the person who installed the software, and voila!, he has access to all your personal details. That means every single key you have entered is recorded and ready to be read by a malicious user, and it includes your usernames, passwords and even your credit card number.

Armed with that information, that person has, in effect, stolen your online identity and he could do really bad things with it, and it would seem like you did it.

Keyloggers are normally invisible and stay that way until they are brought alive using weird key-stroke combinations or some other trick only the guy who installed it would know. Many anti-virus programs detect key-loggers but not all. However, the right kind of probing and searching would tell you if there is a keylogger installed. But then again, many don't care. Should we? With your bank accounts and private mails and credit card numbers, you probably should.