Keylogger or not?

[HairyHarry (imported)]

Out of curiosity, my lad was dismantling an Acer laptop which had suffered a CPU fry-up along with a failing hard disk. Connected between the keyboard and the Ethernet adaptor was a small circuit board with a flash memory chip amongst others. Doing some research he found this URL:

http://hardtruth.navhost.com/keylogger.html

Are the claims that the extra circuit sends keystroke details, to the US government, true? He had to do a considerable amount of dismantling before he found it, so it wouldn't be found by a casual user.

[Riverwind (imported)]

Be ever vigilant and remember you can have piece or freedom but never expect both at the same time.

River

[transward (imported)]

I would suggest that these kind of posts be run by Snopes http://www.snopes.com/computer/internet/dellbug.asp before posting them here.

Transward

[fhunter]

Out of curiosity, my lad was dismantling an Acer laptop which had suffered a CPU fry-up along with a failing hard disk. Connected between the keyboard and the Ethernet adaptor was a small circuit board with a flash memory chip amongst others. Doing some research he found this URL:

http://hardtruth.navhost.com/keylogger.html

Are the claims that the extra circuit sends keystroke details, to the US government, true? He had to do a considerable amount of dismantling before he found it, so it wouldn't be found by a casual user.

On laptops I disassembled - keyboard was connected by the ribbon cable (or two ribbon cables), not by the 4-wire cable.

While having keylogger is posible - what are the activation conditions for the keylogger?

If ethernet adapter was integrated - how it was determined, that cable was going to the adapter, and not to the controller on motherboard?

I strongly doubt that this thing is installed in all laptops.

PS. Looking at the site... well http://hardtruth.navhost.com/cable.html - look here... and I thought that paranoia is treatable.

[bobover3 (imported)]

Should be easy to verify the purpose of all the hardware in a computer. The manufacturer should be able to supply specs and an explanation. You could contact the company or an independent service technician.

[charlenebrown (imported)]

pictures would have been helpful

charlene

[jemagirl (imported)]

If this was real, I think it would a case of Too Much Information. That much data without filters is basically noise.

[IbPervert (imported)]

They want to capture every bit of your life so they can use it against you If you ever become president!

[kb57z (imported)]

Sounds like an advanced case of paranoia to me.

Stop and consider how little of the interaction between the user and a modern PC actually goes through the keyboard, rather than via the mouse. Just think how little use collecting keystrokes would be if you didn't know what was on the screen?

I would not be at all surprised to learn that the "extra board" is the configuration memory, which is "in circuit" at power-up, and which switches over to pass through keystrokes once the initial setup is done and the OS starts loading. It avoids having additional circuitry for the config memory, which saves a little bit of load on the battery, as well as being cheaper.

[IbPervert (imported)]

In actuality the government does not need to embed chips into circuit boards to track you. Just today on CNN.com they had an article on how they tracked the craigslist killer on the internet!

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/09/24/cra ... index.html (http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/09/24/cra ... index.html)

Where ever you go online your Internet Service Provider knows you go there and how long your there! Who ever you call your phone company (cell phones included) knows you call them and for how long. Your credit card company knows where you go to shop...as long as you use the card. Do you use one of those Shopper Reward Cards that provide cheaper prices? Yap they know what food you buy, and with current U.S. laws they could sell that info to your insurance company and they could raise your insurance rates just for buying unhealthy food!

It is very difficult in today's world to really keep anything private and off the record.

So seeing how easy it is for a government body to track down your activities I need to ask...WHY would they need a secret chip in your keyboard?