Wednesday 30 March 2011

An Interesting Read – Keylogger Found On Factory Original Samsung Laptops

Remember the Sony Rootkit fiasco not so long ago?

In the following two part article on the Network World Web site, it looks as though Samsung is placing a clandestine product on their laptops that logs keystrokes:

  1. NetworkWorld: Samsung installs keylogger on its laptop computers: Part 1 – Discovery
  2. NetworkWorld: Samsung responds to installation of keylogger on its laptop computers (Part 2)

To quote Part 2:

“The supervisor who spoke with me was not sure how this software ended up in the new laptop thus put me on hold. He confirmed that yes, Samsung did knowingly put this software on the laptop to, as he put it, ‘monitor the performance of the machine and to find out how it is being used.’"

It is really awesome that we have folks out there that are watching our backs! 8-O

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This was later debunked.. was apparently a false positive by VIPRE.

http://m.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/samsung-keylogger-is-a-gfi-vipre-antivirus-false-positive/12128

http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/31/samsung-reportedly-installing-keylogger-software-on-r525-privac/

http://www.samsungtomorrow.com/1071

Philip Elder Cluster MVP said...

Yeah, I saw that but have been way too busy to sit for five and type up an apology post.

My bad. The source was reputable but the article writer was an unknown.

My apologies for relaying that without further verification.

Philip