Keylogging

[hyper_ch]

you can protect yourself against people getting access to your data through physical access

[scorp123]

Windows is targeted by hackers because it has such a large market, therefore hackers target windows machines because there is a lot more to gain

You're totally ignoring the fact that Linux servers are absolutely on every respectable hacker's target list!! One of my customers is a financial institute and they transfer 1.7 billion Swiss Francs (= 1.52 billion US Dollars!) every day over their wires. The majority of the 4000+ servers involved in this are Linux-based! You can't tell me that a hacker --or rather:-- cracker won't find such a target "highly interesting" ... Then let's mention all those ISP's, all those Web-, DNS- and mail servers. All those e-Shops, web-shops, auction sites, and so on. Nowadays they all run some Unix-like OS. You can't tell me that these targets are "not interesting" for a hacker?

Your claim above is only true for Linux desktops ... If we are talking about Linux desktops then I agree with your claim above. Trying to attack a Linux desktop installation is way too much of a hassle: per default there are most likely no interesting services running, there is hardly any way by which one might gain access, no high-volume network traffic to snoop, no daemons to crack, no remote exploits that would work because most likely there isn't even any network service running in the first place ... Yes, Linux desktops are so totally uninteresting for a hacker. He has nothing to gain here and he'd just be wasting his time.

But trust me ... Servers are a very different story! You want a hacker's attention? Pretend to be a big multi-billion dollar company and have a web server running 24x7. Add a few web based apps for good measure, e.g. a web forum, a web-shop with a SQL database backend ... and then pretend to be a lazy system administrator and leave your server totally unpatched for a month or so ... Trust me, sooner or later you will get their fullest attention and they will devote lots of time to get to know your precious little server better than you would like ...

[vastpast]

It's rather hard to stop an attacker with physical access to your machine. If nothing else, they're free to take a sledgehammer to it, or more reasonably boot from their own media etc. Most of your concerns should be about remote attackers. Installing bad stuff will get you in trouble on any system, but at least with Ubuntu, you can trust the official repositories. Also, Ubuntu has had a better history with remote vulnerabilities compared with Windows. Of course you won't be completely safe, but if anything you'll be relatively safer.

PS: I don't quite see how the key scrambling thing you mentioned works. Whatever the keylogger reads in, so does your intended target application.

KeyScrambler encrypts your keystrokes in the kernel and decrypts it at the destination application, leaving Keyloggers with indecipherable keys to record. http://www.qfxsoftware.com/

[scorp123]

KeyScrambler encrypts your keystrokes in the kernel and decrypts it at the destination application, leaving Keyloggers with indecipherable keys to record.

It is a keylogger itself!!

[vastpast]

It is a keylogger itself!!

[scorp123]

If you look at their video it's obvious: If the application is able to intercept keystrokes at the device driver level and then process the keystrokes and afterwards paste the keystrokes into a target application ... then per definition it is a keylogger too. And best of all: it appears to be closed source??? So you can't really be sure what the application does with the keystrokes it intercepted.

I am sorry to say but using such a program appears very much downright stupid to me (no insult intended here!). I'd rather invest some time and secure my Windows OS (... if I were using Windows at all, that is ...) and make sure there is no malware _AT ALL_ rather than trust such an application which very easily could be malware itself.

Also: Fact is that there are many keyloggers which also work on the device driver level or which even replace the keyboard driver outright. I have had to use such programs myself. The claims of this program that they can "encrypt" keystrokes before any keylogger can get them is therefore a bit dubious.

And obviously this program does not help one little bit with hardware keyloggers. Anyone who has physical access to a computer could rig the keyboard and plant a hardware keylogger, either between the keyboard and the PC or in the inside of the keyboard itself. Been there, done that too.

[vastpast]

If you look at their video it's obvious: If the application is able to intercept keystrokes at the device driver level and then process the keystrokes and afterwards paste the keystrokes into a target application ... then per definition it is a keylogger too. And best of all: it appears to be closed source??? So you can't really be sure what the application does with the keystrokes it intercepted.

I am sorry to say but using such a program appears very much downright stupid to me (no insult intended here!). I'd rather invest some time and secure my Windows OS (... if I were using Windows at all, that is ...) and make sure there is no malware _AT ALL_ rather than trust such an application which very easily could be malware itself.

Also: Fact is that there are many keyloggers which also work on the device driver level or which even replace the keyboard driver outright. I have had to use such programs myself. The claims of this program that they can "encrypt" keystrokes before any keylogger can get them is therefore a bit dubious.

And obviously this program does not help one little bit with hardware keyloggers. Anyone who has physical access to a computer could rig the keyboard and plant a hardware keylogger, either between the keyboard and the PC or in the inside of the keyboard itself. Been there, done that too.

I do use other protection on my PC, the usual stuff for Windows.

I have been using Keyscrambler for well over a year, and I have logged into a number of bank accounts (my own) with it to access considerable amounts of money. I am happy to report I have not lost a single penny/cent so I fully trust Keyscrambler.
It is recommended by a number of organisations such as PC World and Mozilla (FireFox:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/14939...downloads.html

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3383


http://www.qfxsoftware.com/press_mak...s.htm#in_media

[scorp123]

It is recommended by a number of organisations ...

Were they given the chance to inspect that program's source code?? I guess not. So what value does their recommendation have? NONE.

BTW, I too use telebanking since 1995 when I got my first dial-up access. And I use Linux since 1996. And so? Does this prove anything? Nope, it doesn't. Neither does your blind trust into that program. It just proves that Windows users like you (no insult intended!) can be tricked into installing anything for as long as a program promises to produce some "magic miracles" .... and you haven't even seen the source code of that thing, so you don't really know anything about that program and what it really does behind your back.

If you're serious about wanting to try Ubuntu (or any Linux for that matter) then I kindly suggest you let go of your "Windows-thinking". You don't need such programs here. Here on Linux people devote their time making sure that this OS is extremely hard to infect with anything in the first place rather than producing programs that by some miracle promises things which by my professional opinion cannot be 100% true.

I know a few keylogger programs (professional stuff not available to the general public ...) that work on the kernel level too and I am perfectly sure your "magic program" would fail if such keyloggers were to be used against you.

The state of Windows-based computing is really a sad one if users are being "educated" to regard the need of having such programs as being in any way "normal" ...