Phishers moving to keyloggers

This Yahoo article is claiming that phishers are increasingly employing key loggers to gather data which they later use for identity theft (fraud).

From the article it looks like they are mainly talking about software implementations that would get installed on your machine without you knowing it through general lack of awareness. Also note that if you don't have secured space around your computer on which you do business (anything with important data like online banking), it is also possible for someone to put a hardware keylogger on your machine. It is a small device that sits between the keyboard and where it connects to the machine.
It can be installed, collect hundreds of MB of data, and then later physically retrieved and used elsewhere. (I have read that there are also wireless implementations - which are essentially "bugs" in the spy sense)

Note that while Windows is the key target for the software implementation, so Mac and Linux users can be proud about how secure their systems are - the hardware devices work against any keyboard interface (although I haven't seen one for USB keyboards on Macs - but it doesn't mean there isn't one out there).

Posted by Eric at May 5, 2005 10:32 PM | TrackBack