Are you sure your passwords are safe?

If you are using public computers it is possible that somebody maybe spying on you. In a recent visit to the headquarters of a local news paper I found that some computers has spying software installed. Are you sure your office computer is safe?

What is a Keylogger?

Keyloggers are software or hardware tools that captures or stores whatever you type on the keyboard. It captures everything including your passwords, your chat logs and whatever you typed on the keyboard. Some modern keyloggers have the ability to capture the screen as well. There are two types of keyloggers; software and hardware.

The Solution

If you have administrator rights install an anti-keylogger software to remove all keyloggers.
Alternatively you can use this tool to temporarily disable keyloggers. I also reccommend you to try these tools which are listed in wikipedia and roboform2go which is a password management tool for websites.

Confuse keyloggers when you enter a password.

Example: your password is 'thesecretpassword' .
  • Type 'the' in the password box
  • Click on the browser address bar or open the notepad and type something else
  • Again put the focus to the password input box and type 'secret'
  • Click on the browser address bar or open the notepad and type something else
  • Again put the focus to the password input box and type 'pass'
  • Click on the browser address bar or open the notepad and type something else
  • Again put the focus to the password input box and type 'word'
The more parts you breakdown the password the better. This method is not completely safe. But it'll make it more difficult to find the password.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

dude ...
yeah passwords r really har to keep these days ...
some systems wants us to change the passwords every 30 days or so ...
and we have so many websites and accounts that need passwords ...
and yes these key loggers are a nuisance ...
most of the cybercafe's have them installed as well ...
damn it ...
yours is a good article ...
thanks ...
appreciated ...

Anonymous said...

Thanks alot dude...this really helped. :)

-Iram Jr.-

Anonymous said...

Yup Keyloggers are a real threat to users of public computers. While your method of fooling a keylogger would be effective to an extent, it would just be too cumbersome to be practiced.

The best way is to always use PCs of trusted people and not allow untrusted people access to your Personal computer.

If one is forced to use public PCs it would be a good idea to change the password frequently from a trusted PC.

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