HP has a very bad history of “accidental” installed keyloggers on its customers' laptops.
At least twice this year, HP laptops were found to have preinstalled keylogger or spyware applications.
First came a tweet from security researcher ZwClose claiming to have found embedded keyloggers in several HP laptops.
He later published his findings.
Security researcher ZwClose discovered a keylogger on various Hewlett-Packard (HP) laptops, which could allow hackers to record every keystroke and steal sensitive data such as passwords, account information, and credit card details.
The keylogger was found embedded in the SynTP.sys file, a component of the Synaptics Touchpad driver that comes with HP laptops, leaving more than 460 HP notebook models vulnerable to hackers.
Although the keylogger is disabled by default, malicious users could use available open-source tools to bypass user account control (UAC) to enable the built-in keylogger “by setting a registry value.”
Key location:
- HKLM\Software\Synaptics\%ProductName%
- HKLM\Software\Synaptics\%ProductName%\Default
The researcher reported the keylogger to HP last month and the company acknowledged its presence, saying it was actually a “debug trace” that was left unintentionally, but has now been removed.
"A potential security vulnerability has been identified with certain versions of Synaptics touchpad drivers that affect all Synaptics OEM partners," HP said in the advisory , calling the keylogger a potential local loss of confidentiality.
“The contracting party would need administrator rights to exploit the vulnerability. Neither Synaptics nor HP have access to our customers' data from this issue”.
The company has released a driver update for all affected HP Notebook models. So if you are using an HP notebook, it is best to install the updates available for your model. The list of affected HP models is available on the HP support page.
As we mentioned above, this is not the first time it has been found on HP laptops. In May of this year, a keylogger was found embedded in an HP audio driver that could record all user keystrokes and save them to a human-readable file.
