What is a
Keylogger?
A Keylogger is an application that can monitor every single keystroke
that you tap on your PC/Laptop’s or mobile’s keypad.
A Keylogger can prove to be beneficial in certain areas like the same
can be used as a part of a parental control application to monitor every
keystroke of your child’s mobile device keypad enabling you to prevent any sort
of communication with online strangers, cyber bullies, and pedophiles. The best
example of this is the Keylogger which enables you to
monitor your child’s online activity by facilitating you to investigate
Keylogger logs remotely from your mobile device enabling you to have the
information of each phrase entered by your child.
However, due to the ongoing craze of Cryptocurrency, the same
Keylogger application is being majorly used by hackers as a malware to gain
full access to your crypto wallets and to steal entire Cryptocurrency that you
are holding.
What are the modes
through which you can get infected?
·
A
malicious email attachment is the most common mode of all. The email imitates
to be holding some important information related to your bank account or other
finances containing an attachment which could be of any format like document,
Adobe Acrobat file or simply an exe file. If you unknowingly open the
attachment you are infected with the Keylogger malware and every keystroke that
you type on your PC will be sent to the hacker. This way hacker can easily gain
access to your Cryptocurrency wallets.
·
The
second mode is through an infected USB drive. Generally, USB drives are left
outside office buildings and when an unsuspecting employee picks it up and
checks the contents of the drive, his/her computer gets infected with the
Keylogger malware through an auto-run script written on the USB drive.
·
Malicious
web pages are present. By mere visiting these pages the Keylogger malware gets
downloaded. Also, sending malicious links through social media is immensely in
vogue currently.
How to prevent
Keylogger malware from entering your system?
·
The
understandable way is to check the email and confirm its source before opening
any kind of attachment.
·
Don’t
connect unknown USB drives to your PC/ Laptop.
·
Keylogger
malware can even infect your mobile operating system whether it is Android or
iOS. To prevent getting infected from Keylogger malware on your mobile you must
refrain from downloading applications from a 3rd party or unknown
sources. You must use Google Play Store or Apple App Store for downloading and
installing applications on your Android & iOS device respectively.
·
You
must ensure that automatic updates for your PC are on so as to not miss any
security update coming from the developer.
Conclusion
If your system is
already infected by a Keylogger then scan your system with an updated
antivirus. If that doesn’t help then you can open the task manager’s process
section to see if any unknown process is running and end it. However, it is
very difficult to detect and remove the Keylogger once infected since the
malware is good in hiding itself in your system. Hence, the best way is to
prevent your system from getting infected in the first place itself.
