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A keylogger records keystrokes which is an obvious security threat to sensitive information like your banking password. Some Keyloggers can be very hard to detect as they dont appear as a process and aren’t detected by anti-virus software. Keyloggers work by recording every single keystroke that is entered via keyboard, so a person with access to the keylogger can see those keystrokes including any passwords that were typed. Obviously you don’t want this to happen because it could result in the draining of your bank account.

The goal of this article is to help avoid this happening to you and luckily there are a few simple methods that can be used to defeat a keylogger. Knowing at least one of these methods is critical if you are using a public computer, such as those found at an internet cafe’s which have an extremely high risk of infection with a keylogger of some kind.

Types of Keyloggers?

Keyloggers come in both hardware and software types. A software keylogger can be installed in different ways such as via an infected email message or when installing software, especially software downloaded from the internet. Hardware keyloggers require physical access to the computer and come in both USB or PS2 versions, which look something like this…

On-Screen Keyboard Method of Defeating a Keylogger

This method uses the built in On-Screen Keyboard utility to enter the Password. To bring it up hold the Windows Key + U which will bring up the utility manager, then select On-Screen Keyboard then start. It can also be started by going start –> run and typing osk.exe.

Once the keyboard is up it is just a matter of selecting the password box where you want the password to appear, and entering the password via the On-Screen keyboard. This defeats the keylogger because you are entering the password with your mouse instead of the keyboard, so there are no keystrokes for the keylogger to record.

Scramble The Password Manually

As a security measure many public computers will not have access to the run command and if the Windows+U shortcut is also blocked you won’t be able to run the On-Screen keyboard. If this is the case you can manually scramble the password. This is probably the simplest method will always work.

This is how it works, type say the first 3 characters of the password…

Then click on another window or the desktop and type a few random keystrokes…

Then go back to the login window and finish typing the password…

That’s all you need to do. This method works because a keylogger records all keystrokes, no matter what window is currently selected. For example if your password is “bosco”, you could type “bos” then go to another window and type “111″ then back to password box to finish the password with “co”. The password box will see the correct password “bosco” but the keylogger will see all keystrokes “bos111co”, so that your true password has been scrambled.

Firefox KeyScrambler

Another way of scrambling your password is to use a Firefox extension called KeyScrambler. Obviously you need to be using the Firefox browser to use this method and I can’t vouch for the effectiveness of this method as I haven’t tested it, although I have read accounts of people who have tested it with an installed keylogger and report it to be effective.

Update: it seems that last link to bleepingcomputer.com is broken, so I have reproduced it for you here via Archive.org.