The on-screen keyboard application is a “virtual” keyboard. This is where the on-screen keyboard scenario gets interesting. Keyloggers typically insert themselves into the receiving end of this process: they get the keystrokes from the keyboard as they are passed on to Windows.
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Once your keystrokes arrive at the computer from the keyboard, they are processed by a keyboard device driver which (to oversimplify) handles the translation of the keyboard “scan codes”, as they’re called, to the letters, numbers, and symbols Windows applications expect. Much more common are software-based threats. The bad news is that hardware-based keyloggers are rare. By using an on-screen keyboard, you’re bypassing those components of the keyboard hardware that could be compromised. The good news is that your on-screen keyboard does protect you against these two specific types of keyboard-related threats. In addition, the concept of “in range” turns out to be much further than most people think, particularly for a thief with equipment dedicated and tuned to this purpose. Wireless keyboards do encrypt their data, so in theory, the information should be safe, but the quality of the encryption can vary based on the age of the keyboard and the vendor. Any receiver within range can “listen in”.
Wireless keyboards actually broadcast the keystrokes you’re typing. Sometime later they come back, remove the device, and take with it all the information users of that computer entered.Īs it turns out, wireless keyboards can be worse. Particularly lucrative targets are public computers, where someone comes along and installs a physical device between the computer and keyboard: a device that intercepts and logs every keystroke entered. No, not the microprocessor in the keyboard (technically possible, but exceptionally unlikely) - but the cable, or rather, what the cable plugs into. Here we encounter the first point of vulnerability. Typically, when you type a key, a microprocessor within the keyboard sends signals via the cable connecting it to your computer. Remember, a keylogger is just one specific type of malware, and malware can do anything once it’s on your machine. Unfortunately since an on-screen keyboard is indistinguishable from a real keyboard to the program into which you are typing, there remain keylogging techniques an on-screen keyboard will not protect you from. It may even prevent some classes of keyloggers from intercepting your keystrokes.
An on-screen keyboard can protect you from hardware-based keyloggers.
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