{"id":1120,"date":"2023-05-15T00:20:05","date_gmt":"2023-05-15T00:20:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/engadget.vip\/?p=1120"},"modified":"2023-05-15T00:20:05","modified_gmt":"2023-05-15T00:20:05","slug":"mantistek-gk2-keyboard-is-keylogging-key-presses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/?p=1120","title":{"rendered":"MantisTek GK2 keyboard is keylogging key presses"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='booster-block booster-read-block'><\/div><p>The thought of software logging keypresses with a recent piece of hardware you purchased is a frightening thought and that\u2019s what happening with the\u00a0MantisTek GK2 keyboard.<\/p>\n<p>According\u00a0to Tom\u2019s Hardware, who have been looking into claims the keyboard was capturing users\u2019 keypress data, the keyboard would log keypresses and then send that data back to the\u00a0Alibaba server. Initially, it was thought that all the presses were being sent via the Cloud Driver software, but after further investigation, it was discovered that the software\u00a0was capturing how many times each key was being pressed. It is thought that this is to find out how robust keys are based on which ones are used more.<\/p>\n<p>The keyboard is a cheap mechanical keyboard made in China and it\u2019s more than a little worrying that drivers being shipped with cheap hardware could be hiding something the user has not signed-up for.<\/p>\n<p>If anyone has one of these keyboards, make sure the\u00a0Cloud Driver software is not running and block it in the Windows firewall if it\u2019s loading up automatically. It\u2019s by no means ideal but it\u2019s worth spending the time making sure it\u2019s blocked.<\/p>\n<p>The lesson here is to be careful when buying cheap and cheerful products.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The thought of software logging keypresses with a recent piece of hardware you purchased is a frightening thought and that\u2019s what happening with the\u00a0MantisTek GK2 keyboard. According\u00a0to Tom\u2019s Hardware, who have been looking into claims the keyboard was capturing users\u2019 keypress data, the keyboard would log keypresses and then send that data back to the\u00a0Alibaba [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1121,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1410],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1120"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1120\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}