HP Patches Keylogging Bug In Some Laptops

It was discovered earlier this week that the audio driver in some HP laptops had a keylogging bug which basically recorded every single keystroke that the user does on their machine and stores them in a log file. It appears to be an issue of implementation on part of HP and not some nefarious scheme to record users’ keystrokes. The company is now sending out a patch to kill the keylogging bug in some of its laptops.

The keylogger bug was found in more than two dozen HP laptop models, including but not limited to the ProBook, EliteBook, and ZBook. They have a bug in the audio driver that acts as a keylogger and records keystrokes.

Starting Thursday, HP began releasing fixes for affected laptops and will eventually cover all those that are on the list of devices affected by this bug. HP Vice President Mike Nash said that the debugging code in the audio drive was “mistakenly left there,” and that the intent behind it was to help the company debug a problem.

The update that HP is sending out for its affected machines removes the keylogger from the audio driver and also deletes the log file in which the keystrokes were saved. It goes without saying that the driver will stop doubling as the keylogger once this update is installed.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: Computers
Tags: HP