Tin hat bonus: Jetlag got me.

posted Feb 20th 2008 10:29pm by Will O'Brien
filed under: misc hacks

Update: Sorry guys. I hadn’t seen it before, but apparently this dell keylogger junk is a rather delicious hoax. To keep from confusing the RSS readers, I’m leaving a post stub up. If I wasn’t travel-beaten I would have paid attention to the fact that the supposed keylogger wasn’t on a flexible flat cable. I pulled the image since it was originally stolen.

It’s ~~probably~~ totally BS, but supposedly this guy found what seems to be a keylogger inside his new dell 600m laptop. He submitted a FOIA request to the DHS, only to have his request denied. It’s a bit tin-hat, but the idea that a three letter agency might be adding extra hardware to your laptop is very disturbing indeed. I guess it’s time to start auditing any new hardware purchased for bonus parts. [via]

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Comments [16]

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hoax

Posted at 10:46 pm on Feb 20th, 2008 by squidhat

Here’s the Snopes link for those interested: http://www.snopes.com/computer/internet/dellbug.asp

This is a few years old, by the way.

Posted at 10:52 pm on Feb 20th, 2008 by Daniel

This was on here a few years ago IIRC

Also it is FAKE

100% FAKE

Posted at 11:01 pm on Feb 20th, 2008 by Weirdguy

Old hoax which has long been debunked.

The PS/2 cable should be a good giveaway Laptops use ribbon cable.

Please issue a public apology so we know you are not using manufactured fear to increase ad hits/revenue, like Digg, Slashdot, and Make routinely do.

Posted at 11:01 pm on Feb 20th, 2008 by stopit

Google “dell laptop keylogger” there are many discussions about it. Scary concept still of course

Posted at 11:01 pm on Feb 20th, 2008 by Dave

OK, this one is a hoax. But why couldn’t it be real? I wouldn’t hook mine up to the Ethernet line, but it seems entirely plausible to me that you could build a keyboard sniffer with an integrated Bluetooth or WiFi interface for readout. Take a surface-point Atmel or PIC16F, a serial EEPROM, tiny BT module and you’re off. The 600m is easy enough to work inside, and very few people take their laptops apart enough to see something like that (and would probably mistake it for the modem or BT modules anyway – they look similar enough).

Posted at 11:50 pm on Feb 20th, 2008 by Ian

Yes it could definitely be real, but this one, like squidhat and weirdguy said, is total and absolute hoax….

I mean, you don’t need anyone to tell you, just do what I did: Look at the source code of the page :-)

(Finally, all those months spent playing notpron are somewhat paying up :-P)

Posted at 12:36 am on Feb 21st, 2008 by dioxide

The wonderful picture that always attracts everybody’s attention to this hoax is, by the way, MINE, from my old review of the KeyGhost Security Keyboard:
http://www.dansdata.com/keyghost.htm

Posted at 3:37 am on Feb 21st, 2008 by Daniel Rutter

Don’t sweat the hoax man.

stuff happens.

Posted at 7:45 am on Feb 21st, 2008 by strider_mt2k

All I can say is:
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/duty_calls.png

Posted at 11:13 am on Feb 21st, 2008 by BOFH

did anyone ever think that the reason it’s been posted as “it’s a hoax” is that someone got contacted by a certain agency, I won’t claim to know which, and was told to say that this is just a hoax? It would be a most effective and cost free method for them to cover it up. Everyone on here gives the webmaster credibility, and it gives “them” plausible deniability about any sort of cover up. I’m not making acusations, but it all seems a bit fishy.

Posted at 12:48 pm on Feb 21st, 2008 by colby

what about building a keylogger disguised as ps/2 t usb adapter…that would be a wicket promotional item

Posted at 1:16 pm on Feb 21st, 2008 by tim

Just wanted to say thanks for going on the record regarding this being a hoax. Sometimes a quick check of mythbusting sites like Snopes will help determine if a rumor is trueâ¦in this case this is FALSE: http://www.snopes.com/computer/internet/dellbug.asp

Posted at 1:29 pm on Feb 21st, 2008 by AnneATDell

if dell was going to do this, wouldn’t they keep it all on the motherboard to both keep inconspicuous and incase of keyboard replacement, continue loging? this is illogical, plus they would be in serious legal trouble. also to them a simple keylogger would be useless… embedding their own trojan in your preloaded windows would be much simpler for stealing your info.
OH NOES!!!!!!!
*paranoia paranoia everyone’s out to get me*

Posted at 4:37 pm on Feb 21st, 2008 by despot

I also don’t think that such a company like Dell would have put keyloggers into their computers, but it is better to have hardware anti-keylogger anyway like PrivacyKeyboard or any other.

Posted at 5:17 pm on Feb 21st, 2008 by Jefferson

Nice Stuff… Keep It Up.

Posted at 6:25 am on Feb 28th, 2008 by Eliseo