Topic: Device bugs
Whoa! This certainly has flown quietly under the radar, it seems as though any current new HP laptop that you recently purchased from any vendor maybe be recording all of your activities.
A warning update was issued this past Thursday by a Swiss security research firm who discovered a ModZero bug which comes in a form of a audio driver, the audio chip is manufactured by Conextant which is installed on several HP laptops that includes the HP Elitebook, ProBook, and ZBook. The ModZero bug itself is a keylogger, the absolute nastiest malware that can compromise any computer system.
This particular Keystroke logger is no difference any other, keystrokes are recorded that includes password to bank accounts, Amazon, private messaging and even monitors your social media activity. Access while using the mentioned HP computers with the audio driver can view and gain access to some very sensitive data.
How it operates in detail goes as follow, the executable file controls the audio hardware when any user presses a specific keystroke. The actual software includes an actual debugging feature that sends all of your keystrokes directly to a debugging device, even depositing it to a log file kept in a public directory placing it on your hard drive.
This is the actual Keylogger Malware written hexadecimal code
The entire debugging process have the ability to transform an effective audio drive into a keylogging spyware according the to Modzero research experts. They also stated that this nasty spyware has been present dating back to last year, Dec 2015 to be exact.
Now according to HP they are much aware of this issue but claiming that there is no access to consumer data, we've heard statements like this from manufactures before.
Fret not, help is on the way, there is an offered fix by HP which should clear the Keylogger bug, you'll have to log onto HP.com and locate the security patch. My advice would be to delete and reinstall the audio driver altogether. You can also contact HP tech support and inquire if there's a definite security patch.