Keylogger Detection - Online Armor Firewall Software

Keylogger Detection

What is a keylogger (Keystroke Recorder)?

A keylogger is a "spy program" designed to record what you type and either send it over the internet to someone such as your spouse, your boss or even worse - criminals intent on stealing from you. There is a growing trend of organised criminals stealing banking (or PayPal) passwords through various methods, and then using the illicitly gained access to empty the account. One way is to install (using a virus, drive-by-download, exploit or trojan) a keystroke recorder. This sits there silently until you visit a site of interest (usually your bank) - and then it records what you type and sends it away.

How does Online Armor help me?

Online Armor's anti-keylogger function is capable of detecting and preventing keystroke recording programs. If a keystroke recorder is detected, you'll receive an alert and have the opportunity to block it from doing what it wants to do.

How does keylogger detection work?

Online Armor's behaviour detection ensures that even specially created or new keyloggers are detected and prevented. This is because Online Armor does not just keep a list of bad programs (which is very hard to keep up to date), we monitor what they do. There are a number of methods that can be used by a program to record what you type. Online Armor detects when a program tries to use one of these methods and lets you know with a popup.

Unfortunately, some legitimate programs can use these methods. For example, a program which needs to detect whether or not you are using the keyboard might use one of the "bad" methods. These programs could possibly record what you type, but do not. This can lead to some confusion when you don't know quite what to do.

Fortunately, Online Armor helps to solve this problem too. Like the rest of Online Armor, we don't worry you with these popups when we know the program is safe (a list we are constantly updating). We also color code these popups so that if you have allowed a program we think is unsafe or undesirable to run, you'll get a bright red popup should it try to record what you are typing.

How effective is Online Armor's keylogger detection?

Online Armor is highly effective at detecting and preventing keystroke recorders. It has been under development for over two years, initially named "BankSafe" - Online Armor was initially a specialist password-protecting program for Online Banking.

Our team has spent considerable effort using a variety of test programs to make sure Online Armor can catch all of the known keystroke recording methods. Some security vendors and researchers develop prototype keystroke recorders purely to demonstrate the effectiveness of their product, and the limitations of other products. Online Armor is frequently tested against new tests as they are released, and should we not pass a test (because a new method has been devised) we quickly update Online Armor to cater for it.

Online Armor is capable of detecting a huge variety of keyloggers by the methods that they use.