Thousands Of HP Laptops Have Keyloggers Installed By Default

HP Laptops Keylogger

If you bought a new HP laptop in 2015 or 2016, be ver very scared. It may be recording everything you type, including your passwords.

Swiss security researcher ModZero has issued a warning that the audio driver installed on many HP laptops has a keylogger-type feature that is secretly recording everything you type to an easily accessible encrypted file on your hard drive. The driver has been developed by the audio chipmaker Conexant, and28 models of HP laptops and tablets running Windows 7 or Windows 10are equipped with it. This includes the Elitebook, ProBook, and the ZBook Models. The full list is available at ModZero.

The software will be recording your every keystroke whether it is your passwords, credit card details, visited websites, and private chat messages. An executable file on the driver controls audio hardware when a person presses special keys. The same software includes a debugging feature that sends all the keystrokes through a debugging device and deposits them to a log file in the public directory on the system’s hard drive. Anyone who has access to your system will be able to access all that information even if they are not authorized to access that information.

 The warning by ModZero reads: “This type of debugging turns the audio driver effectively into keylogging spyware. On the basis of meta-information of the files, this keylogger has already existed on HP computers since at least Christmas 2015.” ModZero also said that every time the system is rebooted, the log file is overwritten.
HP said that it was a mistake but the company was aware of it and since they had no access to the customer data as a result. HP.com has the fixes available, and the company has issued a statement saying, “Our supplier partner developed software to test audio functionality prior to product launch, and it should not have been included in the final shipped version.”

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