Busted! HP Caught Shipping Laptops With Pre-Installed Keyloggers

Posted on the 16 December 2017 by Nrjperera @nrjperera

HP has a bad history of offering horrible experiences to its laptop and computer users. The popular tech company has been caught red-handed several times over the past few years.

The company recently made news again after getting caught shipping HP laptops with a preinstalled keylogger inside the computers. According to BBC, the Keylogger was found in more than 460 different types of HP laptop models.

What Are Keyloggers?

Keyloggers are a type of software that can hide behind your computer to record every single key you press on your keyboard. These records can later be obtained by a person or a company.

For example, if you were to type the password to your bank account, the keylogger can record that and if someone were to hack your computer these records would be easily accessible.

Keyloggers are normally used by hackers to steal passwords from users.

Caught Red Handed


A security researcher named Michael Myng found the keylogger hidden inside HP laptops. According to Myng, many HP laptops including EliteBook, ProBook, Pavilion Envy and many other models that date back to 2012 were shipped with this keylogger pre-installed on the laptops.

Here's what HP had t say about it -

"HP uses Synaptics' touchpads in some of its mobile PCs and has worked with Synaptics to provide fixes to their error for impacted HP systems, available via the security bulletin on HP.com."

If you have an HP laptop, visit here to download the patch updates to fix the vulnerability.

You can't really trust anybody or anything these days.