Is Your Laptop Spying on You?

People practically live on their computers these days. Job seekers can attest to doing a lot of typing. So imagine if every keystroke you ever made on your computer was being recorded. What if a screen capture intermittently caught an image of what you were viewing at the moment and saved that as well? On top of that, you had no idea the information was being collected or who was seeing it.

Quite a few people would blush if the whole account of their computer interaction was logged and listed before them like a virtual judgment day. That’s exactly what security researcher Mohammed Hassan of NetSec Consulting thought he had discovered after purchasing a new Samsung laptop. A scan of his new computer and the upgraded model he returned it for R525 and R540 laptop computers revealed a program preinstalled called StarLogger at the file path "c:\windows\SL\". When he called Samsung to inquire about his find he was routed through several channels and eventually told the software was there to "monitor the performance of the machine and to find out how it is being used."

The software is undetectable on start up and records everything being typed, everything! Including but not limited to emails, messages, documents, web pages, usernames, and passwords even in multiple windows and in password protected boxes. Additionally, it saves JPGs of the screen periodically that can be viewed later. The target audience is mostly employers, parents, and forgetful computer users who suffer from frequent power outages without saving.

In a post he made on Network World, Hassan said: "Samsung's conduct may be illegal; even if it is eventually ruled legal by the courts, the issue has legal, ethical, and privacy implications for both the businesses and individuals who may purchase and use Samsung laptops. Samsung could also be liable should the vast amount of information collected through StarLogger fall into the wrong hands."

Hassan suggested that it could be a similar situation to the 2005 lawsuit against Sony BMG who’s CDs secretly installed malware that prevented music ripping on customers’ computers. They were found liable to the tune of $575 million in fines and payouts. Mark Russinovich, the developer who had discovered and exposed the fraudulent rootkit weren’t surprised. Russinovich said, "Consumers don't have any kind of assurance that other companies are not going to do the same kind of thing (as Sony)."

Samsung said they are not one of those companies. They investigated the matter immediately and found that the software wasn’t there. Instead the path led to Microsoft's Live Application multi-language support folder. It was labeled 'SL' like StarLogger but 'SL' was for the language Slovene the same way 'EN' is for English. Samsung stated, "Our findings indicate that the person mentioned in the article used a security program called VIPRE that mistook a folder created by Microsoft’s Live Application for a key logging software, during a virus scan."

And Samsung owners issued a giant sigh of relief. Maybe they’ll forget tech support’s flub in assuming their computers would be equipped with some sort of similar programming and passing off an answer that seemed reasonable just to close the case.

Want to help revolutionize technology? Check out the job listings at TechCareers.com

By Heather Fairchild - Heather is a multimedia developer with experience in web, film, photography and animation as well as traditional fine arts like painting and sculpting. In addition to writing for TechCareersBlog.com, she is co-founder of design and promotion company, Creative Kazoo with fellow Nexxt blogger, Staci Dennis. Heather’s spare time consists of making puppets, teaching Sunday School, building Legos and doing science experiments with her children.