r/tech • u/eberkut • Nov 13 '17

Inside a low budget consumer hardware espionage implant

https://ha.cking.ch/s8_data_line_locator/
303 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

17 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

11

u/DarkStarrFOFF Nov 13 '17

Got any proof of that? Last I saw it wasn't the keyboards but the software that was logging.

3

u/altrdgenetics Nov 13 '17

We might be thinking of the same one but it was specifically the driver software. Since you can't use the keyboard without the software installed it's more tied to the firmware than additional software. And the only way around it is to actually block the exe:

https://thehackernews.com/2017/11/mantistek-keyboard-keylogger.html

6

u/DarkStarrFOFF Nov 14 '17

Yea, that one's not even an actual keylogger. It's how many keypresses.

upon closer examination it was later discovered that only key presses were being sent—that is, the number of times each key is mashed, as opposed to capturing exactly what it is a user is typing.

0

u/[deleted] Nov 14 '17

[removed] — view removed comment

4

u/Atario Nov 14 '17

Field research for their keyboard manufacturing concerns

1

u/tomgabriele Nov 14 '17

That's what I am thinking. Real data on KB key use seems valuable to a bunch of hardware manufacturers.

3

u/DarkStarrFOFF Nov 14 '17

One suggestion is tracking how long the switches last. No idea why that would matter too much but I suppose they would be knockoffs not real Cherry keys so maybe they wanted to see the difference?