https://doi.org/10.2352/ISSN.2470-1173.2017.6.MOBMU-313 © 2017, Society for Imaging Science and Technology The strange world of keyloggers - an overview, Part I Reiner Creutzburg Technische Hochschule Brandenburg, Department of Informatics and Media, IT- and Media Forensics Lab, P.O.Box 2132, D-14737 Brandenburg, Germany Email:
[email protected] Abstract events, as if it was a normal piece of the application instead In this article we give a bibliographic overview of keyloggers of malware. The keylogger receives an event each time the and review the relavant hard- and software and mobile keyloggers user presses or releases a key. The keylogger simply records that are available and in use. The functionalities, availability, it. + Windows APIs such as GetAsyncKeyState(), GetFore- detection possibilities of keyloggers are described and reviewed. groundWindow(), etc. are used to poll the state of the key- In a future Part II keyloggers for mobile devices and the eth- board or to subscribe to keyboard events [3]. A more recent ical and legal aspects are reviewed. example simply polls the BIOS for pre-boot authentication PINs that have not been cleared from memory [4]. Keylogger – Introduction • Form grabbing based: Form grabbing-based keyloggers Keystroke logging, often referred to as keylogging [1] or log web form submissions by recording the web browsing keyboard capturing, is the action of recording (logging) the keys on submit events. This happens when the user completes a struck on a keyboard, typically covertly, so that the person using form and submits it, usually by clicking a button or hitting the keyboard is unaware that their actions are being monitored.