Prevent Your Key Actions from Being Recorded by a Keylogger

Hello world, I’m Zanidd, and welcome to the Hands-on Password Cracking and Security course on Code Red. In this section, we’re covering the remedies for the attacks demonstrated in the course and we will also take a look at different password managers and how they can or cannot solve our problems with passwords. How do you prevent the keylogger from recording all your keystrokes? That’s what I’m going to answer in this lesson. If it wasn’t clear for you by now, I’m a big fan of Multifactor Authentication. While it is not an all-in-one solution to all password problems, it helps prevent a lot of common cases.

If you use MFA, the logged password will be useless for the attacker, unless he also owns the second factor for the authentication. So use Multifactor Authentication. However, there are some more remedies for this. Make sure to update your systems regularly. This will allow you to close security vulnerabilities that allow an attacker to log your keystrokes, like the Logitech one we discussed in the last section. You can even use a tool like KeyScrambler that will encrypt your keystrokes into unreadable garbage for the attacker. This way even if you’re infected, the attacker cannot gain the password, unless his malware also attacks such tools. A last tip is to never instal cracked software.

Not only is it a massive security risk because it’s an unsigned application from somewhere in the internet that anybody could have uploaded, it’s also illegal in most countries. And use an anti-malware software or antivirus to protect from, scan against, and detect unwanted malware, like keyloggers. This will help you immensely to prevent your passwords getting stolen by a keylogger. It’s also the most used measure in enterprise, as there are great solutions to use and deploy on multiple machines and manage them. If, for some reason, you cannot use an anti-malware software, you can detect keyloggers in Task Manager on Windows. But this can be very hard, to almost impossible, depending on the malware.

Efficient malware will manipulate the kernel internal structure so as not to appear at all in the list of process. Another way is to use firewalls. Use them to your advantage. Block all incoming and outgoing traffic that seems suspicious. Or, better yet, block everything and only open needed ports in the first place. Of course, this is only effective as long as the open ports are not the ports required by the malware. In this case, block the installation or use of specific ports on the devices itself. For example, block all traffic on port 80 and 443, except for browsing the internet with browsers. Be as restrictive as possible without interfering too much with the user experience and productivity.

In the next lesson, we will focus on general tips to prevent your passwords from being hacked.