Synaptics driver puts a keylogger on HP laptopsFor the second time this year, HP Inc has had to patch its laptops after a security researcher found a driver-level keylogger – and this time, other laptop-makers might have to check their own products.
The debug trace was in the Synaptics Touchpad driver used almost across-the-board in HP laptops, and while it is turned off by default, a registry entry could turn it on. While few home users would be likely to turn it on, it would be a tasty exploit for RAT (remote access trojan) herders.
https://www.theregister.com/2017/12/11/hp_synaptics_keylogger/ HP's security advisory related to this story:
https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c05827409....
As an example of this happening in the real world: synaptics touchpad drivers have been known to contain keyloggers for years.
Worse case scenario: system utilities, drivers and libraries may contain keyloggers or backdoors of some type. Windows itself has been known to harvest user data as far back as windows 98. There was an old index.dat file many would periodically open, clear and save to erase collection of end user data. I would have to guess the amount of data today's distros log are far more comprehensive and detailed.
Long story short: windows is known to collect and log user data as far back as 1997. Maybe its time to switch to linux? If only linux had better gaming support. Confirmed backdoors have been found in many things ranging from routers to smartphones. Even supposedly secure crypto hardware wallets have been found to have them.