wok-key: dealing with keyloggers on net-cafe computers

[Tom Buskey]

Boot from a CD or USB key?

Of course, USB keyboards<http://www.gadgetlite.com/2009/08/10/video-apple-keyboard-hack-reveals/>
can
be reprogrammed<http://slashdot.org/story/09/08/01/1658258/Apple-Keyboard-Firmware-Hack-Demonstrated>
.

On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 5:54 PM, Bill McGonigle <bill at bfccomputing.com>wrote:

> I'm usually pretty paranoid about typing my passwords on any computers I
> don't own.  I assume most have keyloggers installed, as I've seen some
> that do.
>
> The problem is, internet cafes are really darn handy.  I so rarely type
> confidential material in my email but still have to disclose my password
> to get access.
>
> So, I made an attempt to find a way to get around this.  Demo here:
>
>  http://bfccomputing.com/wokkey/
>
> The idea is this: when the page loads, it creates a random selection of
> two-character lower-case letter codes, and maps one to each of the keys
> on a keyboard (US for now).  You type in these two character codes
> instead of your password and javascript copies the correct codes over to
> your password field.  This is probably not immune to frequency analysis
> or to some sort of hypothetical screen-capture+keylogger malware but I
> think it helps with vanilla keyloggers.  You can type extra bogus codes
> to poke at the frequency analysis if you want, the javascript will
> auto-delete them.
>
> So far, I've got it working with SquirrelMail (the version that comes
> with Fedora 10).  It takes me about 30 seconds to enter a 10-character
> password.  If anybody wants to play with that (a poorly hacked
> login.php) or give feedback, reply here or to me.  I'm curious if
> anybody besides me would actually use such a thing. :)
>
> Thanks,
> -Bill
>
> --
> Bill McGonigle, Owner
> BFC Computing, LLC
> http://bfccomputing.com/
> Telephone: +1.603.448.4440
> Email, IM, VOIP: bill at bfccomputing.com
> VCard: http://bfccomputing.com/vcard/bill.vcf
> Social networks: bill_mcgonigle/bill.mcgonigle
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