Monday, December 11th 2017
HP Laptops Shipped with Hidden Keylogger
Michael Myng, more commonly known as ZwClose, was approached by a friend to look into the possibility of controlling the keyboard's backlighting on his HP laptop. Michael was down for the challenge, and his friend sent the Synaptics SynTP.sys file over to him. After analyzing the keyboard driver, he found the sleeping keylogger. The logging function is disabled by default. However, intruders can enable it easily by modifying the registry value through malicious code. Michael reported the issue to HP, and the company released a list of the affected laptop models along with a security patch. The list contains over 400 models from HP's most popular product lines like the EliteBook, ProBook, ZBook, Spectre Pro, ENVY, Pavilion, OMEN - just mention a few. Now that the vulnerability is public, we urge HP laptop owners to install the security patch ASAP. The fix is also available on Windows Update if that's your preferred method.
Sources:
ZwClose, HP
15 Comments on HP Laptops Shipped with Hidden Keylogger
Your Internet access is blocked
Firewall or antivirus software may have blocked the connection.
Try:
- Checking the connection
- Checking firewall and antivirus configurations
ERR_NETWORK_ACCESS_DENIEDright click and save gives me a network error. Nice.
None of this is ok. That patch is hopefully removing the offending code instead of locking it down a little more, only to be unlocked later..