Hardware Key Logger Review

Hardware Keyloggers

These types of keyloggers require that the perpetrator have physical access to your computer. They can easily be installed in less than 5 seconds. They come in the form of USB port connectors, keyboard connectors and even masquerade as keyboards themselves.

Once installed, a hardware keylogger will capture every keystroke entered into your keyboard and then store it for future retrieval on the device itself.

Some hardware keylogger companies boast a two million keystroke capacity! That’s about 5 years worth of typing for the average computer user. Whether at home or in the office, you can easily fall victim to this type of spying. A Hardware Keylogger is installed between your keyboard and computer, like this:


Some hardware keyloggers come in the form of a keyboard, but if you examine the line going to the computer you can see an irregular bulge as pictured below. That should make you very suspicious

Some Key Loggers come in the form of a USB Drive

How do they work?

All hardware keyloggers have to have the following:

· A microcontroller - this interprets the datastream between the keyboard and computer, processes it, and passes it to the non-volatile memory

· A non-volatile memory - this stores the recorded data, even when power is lost
On the whole, typing a special password into a computer text editor retrieves the recorded data. As the hardware keylogger is plugged in-between the keyboard and computer, it detects the password has been typed and then starts presenting the computer with "typed" data to produce a menu.

Beyond text menu some keyloggers offer a high-speed download to speed up retrieval of stored data, this can be via USB mass-storage enumeration or with a USB or serial download adapter.