THESE HP LAPTOPS

Petaling Jaya : Over 400 HP laptop models have a hidden keylogger that, if activated, will allow a hacker to-

Record every single keystroke the user makes -including the user names and passwords.

The Keylogger was discovered in HP's Synaptics Touvhpad driver which makes the keyboard work, and models as far back as 2012 are affected including EliteBook, Spectra Pro, Pavillion, Zbook and Omen.

HP has since issued patches for removing the keylogger on its Customer Support bulletin which lists all the models affected along with the fix that the user needs to download and install.

It also states on the bulletin neither Synaptics or HP has access to customer data as a result of the issue and that a person would need administrative right in order to take advantage of the vulnerability.

The keylogger was discovered by tech blogger Michael Myng when he was trying to figure out how the keyboard backlighting worked when he noticed a strange pattern in the driver.

Myng said that the keylogger was actually a ''debug trace'' put in place to catch errors.

This is not the first time it has happened  -in May several HP laptops were found to have a  keylogger embedded in the audio driver, writes author Sharmila Nair.

 The company has since issued a fix.