possible hacking?

[kentborg at borg.org (Kent Borg)]

On Wed, Jan 25, 2006 at 12:11:43PM -0500, Bob BLU wrote:
> Can you give us a short explanation on how one might "look for
> hardware keyboard loggers"?

There are USB and PS/2 dongle thingies that can be plugged in between
the keyboard and the computer that will record everything typed.

An example: http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/electronic/5a05/

If you can see the entire wire from keyboard to computer and don't see
anything odd in the cable, you are clear of the first order risk.  

Next possibility (and less likely) is the keyboard itself might have a
recorder in it.  I suppose someone sells such keyboards, or maybe one
could hack one pretty easily.  Look for oddities in the keyboard.

Least likely is that the keyboard jack on the back of the computer has
been hacked, because that jack usually connects directly to the
motherboard and hacking motherboards is work.  More risky is a
keyboard plugged into a front panel jack, those are connected by wires
that might be spliced into.

One week a year or so back I think I heard of three different keyboard
sniffing attacks: someone at a Kinkos, some university person, and an
airport internet kiosk person, all were bugging keyboards.


-kb