I just tried to log into a secured system, and my keyboard suddenly took an unscheduled vacation. Only an occasional keystroke would ‘take’ and then it would produce the wrong character. I restarted several times, with different keyboards, and couldn’t even enter my system login, or even get into BIOS setup on POST. Then, it started working again.
Takeaway lesson: I have way too many keyboards lying around. I still don’t know what the hell happened with the keyboard.
On an unrelated note (several thousand notes, actually) the awesome big-band jazz number that accompanies the extended credits sequence on the DVD Incredibles makes great cardio workout music. Or, music to get speeding tickets by, if you prefer.
You mean the viral keylogger was defective
?
That was the first thing that came to mind, and seriously freaked me out. But the fact that the keyboard(s) didn’t even work at the POST level makes me think it was a hardware issue in the motherboard.
Can keyloggers embed themselves into firmware?
They can, but most BIOS systems have a backup. So when the primary gets infected with a virus it is over-written with the original code. Thus even if a virus is infecting the BIOS from a hard drive it still won’t do squat. You would need a separate piece of hardware that bypasses your current BIOS.
How is it possible to tell if a secured site is clean?
I guess by the amount of bitching people do on the Internet? Not sure on this one…