Advanced Keylogger- A Stealthy Malware for Computer Monitoring

Abstract

Modern society is far more dependent on electronic devices than the previous generations. This dependency has both pros and cons. Although the list of pros is endless, they can easily be outweighed by one con which is being vulnerable to malicious programs. Keylogger is one such malware. Earlier, the prime focus was just limited to recording keystrokes made by a user but now are known for incorporating a multitude of features. Keyloggers are used to steal confidential information covertly and their detection is not quite simple since they execute completely in stealth mode. In this exposition, an advanced software keylogger is proposed which is compared with the existing keyloggers based on two criteria, first being the number of features incorporated and second, the CPU usage while the keylogger is being executed. The evaluation posits that the proposed keylogger contains more features with keeping the CPU usage to a minimum hence making it difficult to be detected by the user.