I am finishing development on a hardware keylogger.

Essentially this device sits between the keyboard and the PC, it logs all keypresses to internal memory and allows for later retrieval using any text editor. If, after opening a text editor, your type your password the unit will 'type' a menu allowing you to clear it, have it 'type' all previously recorded keypresses, etc.

I plan on releasing full source and including the ability to upgrade the units firmware over the keyboard port.

Would members of this list be interested in such a toy? I plan on selling them for between $50-75 Canadian ($32-50 USD).

I'm just courious what people would use such a device for other than getting passwords and such ?

Ahhh....welcome to my field. Computer Forensics. They have been making these things for awhile. I've come close to having to get one to 'monitor' someone.

Well,

Other similar products had been sold under the pretense of being a backup device. The general idea was if word dies on you all of the text which you have already typed can be recovered. Of course any copy/pasting (which is my fav will be lost which limits the usefullnes of that feature.

I had hoped that people interested in embedded systems and design might want to play with it as a sort of intro toy. The unit works out of the box and provides the source code/schematic. Since it is easy to reprogram it over the PS/2 keyboard port you can edit the code to make it do completly whacky things and upload it to the unit.

The micro has SPI on it so an example project would be an RS232 to keypress or keypress to RS232 converter.

Additionally, in the catching passwords department, a hardware keylogger can snag your bios password which a software based one won't.

I have seen a couple of them.

I wasn't so much thinking the product would be different but that the open source aspect (and low cost) might make it an appealing toy.

Dont get me wrong, there are some things a keylogger can do that you can't dig out with software. I wouldn't say the bios password logging is a good example (that is the simple to get by, either jumper the CMOS to clear it, or pull the drive if they locked it from preventing bootup). I would say its a good way to monitor a workstation to see what ID's they are using to access servers, things not reguarly cached anywhere.

Any macro features?

Tom

Hmmm - does this come under Forensics or Investigation? I have a feeling the moral and legal responsibilities may be important here.

Investigating a suspected felon under a warrant certainly seems like a valid use, but actually installing one of these ostensibly to recover data in a crash situation may be considered by some as a serious infringement of their rights.

In a buisness enviroment it is a little different. It is not your computer, it is the property of the company. Same with work Email. Companies can monitor all email used in the buisness enviroment. Home use is a different story.......

Like I whack control+c and it types a pre-programmed set of keys?

Not presently but I quite like to idea. The base code for recieving/decoding/storing/retrieving/encoding/sending keys is all there. Changing it from a log and re-transmit to a watch for pattern and re-transmit saved pattern wouldn't be to difficult.

This is one of the reasons I thought the open source aspect might be fun. If you wanted to add a feature, or even change the primary behaviour of the unit, you could.

Well I had actually thought in the data recovery situation the user taking advantage of it would know it was there. That way if thier computer crashed they could type the password only they know and recover the data.

As for the moral issues, I will recommend ways in which one can/should use it. If certain people decide to use it in other more questionable ways I can't really stop them.

Satan_x was correct on the buisness environment. I know many companies already monitor email and web surfing. Throwing a hardware keylogger on you machine is the next logical step.

Also, parents often install monitoring software onto their home machines to monitor spouses and children. I don't know the specific legality of doing this but I havn't heard of anyone getting in trouble for it (well not the person putting it there anyways )

USB or PS/2? PS/2 is going to be real hard to find in use in another year...

Be sure to include a disclaimer.........

This model is PS/2.
Assuming anyone is interested in this one, or if everyone says 'it would be cool if only it was USB', I was thinking of making another version which supports USB.

The only real problem with USB is I have to ignore all of the non-keyboard devices which could be tossing by a substantial amount of Data.

I would consider building one just for the sheer pleasure of learning how it works. These types of projects facinate me. I guess thats why I'm an EE/CS major.

John