Many users know all too well, what happened to Google during January. Hackers were able to install a program called a keylogger onto internal systems and then record passwords etc. to further infiltrate the corporate systems and steal information. This type of attack is now becoming one of the most common hacker methods. I now see Trojans with keyloggers installed almost 50% of the time on various users’ virus detection results. This is because viruses and Trojans are becoming increasingly financially motivated to steal credit card numbers, social security numbers, and passwords. The problem however, is that keyloggers can be very difficult to detect by standard free antivirus. In addition, keyloggers are very simple pieces of software that can be recoded in hours thwarting new antivirus definitions. Therefore, a personal computer cannot be considered completely safe with just free antivirus and antispyware.
Thankfully, new free software has come along to solve this problem. The software is called KeyScrambler. KeyScrambler works by encrypting a user keyboard strokes from the keyboard and then sending the keystrokes to an application such as Microsoft Word, Firefox, or the Windows Login. Therefore, a keylogger or Trojan installed on the system will only pick up garbled information rather than the actual keystrokes.
In testing, KeyScrambler Personal worked exactly as advertised. I downloaded several keyloggers and KeyScrambler defeated all of them. In addition to keyloggers, remote access software is also rendered useless. Another advantage to KeyScrambler is that provides protection even if a keylogger has already been installed on the system. Therefore, the keylogger does not even need to be removed or detected and a user can still have active protection.
The interface of KeyScrambler might be a little bit annoying. By default, KeyScrambler will display a toolbar whenever the software is active displaying the encrypted keystrokes. On smaller screens, this toolbar can be somewhat annoying. However, the toolbar can be displayed while a small tray application is enabled showing the status of encryption. On a final note, KeyScrambler Personal requires a system restart to complete installation, utilizes OpenSSL encryption, and comes with auto update functionality.
KeyScrambler Personal Free comes with a Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Flock plugin and protection only. A user will want to upgrade to the full version to get access to over 160 different application plugins.
