Aobo Mac Keylogger is the best Keylogger for Mac that records keystrokes typed on Mac OS X machine. It records keystrokes on any applications and sends the logs to you by email/FTP. With the Keylogger for Mac, you can easily monitor your kids, employees and other users on your Mac. How to Install a Keylogger on Mac. To test how MacScan and Malwarebytes are capable of finding keyloggers I decided to install all four keyloggers on my Mac. IMPORTANT: I don’t endorse any keylogger here. Moreover, if you want to avoid getting malware on your Mac, do not download software from anywhere except Apple App Store. Personally, I do. Elite Keylogger for Mac records everything a user types on the monitored computer, whether it's for a document, an e-mail, or a Web form, and can secretly deliver the information to your e-mail. Spytech’s Real Time Spy is a remote installation keylogger for Mac with real-time remote reporting. It captures keystrokes, chat applications, conversations, social network activity, GPS locations and passwords, along with web activity, search queries and much more. If it somehow fails to capture something – fear not. Anti-keylogger for Mac Antivirus & Security › PC Protection An anti-keylogger is a type of application that was created with the purpose of protecting your computer against apps that record your keystrokes and send the data to a the users of the malware.
Keyloggers are malware designed to track your keyboard and mouse inputs. It records every keystroke and clicks to spy on your system. For example, your bank account details, pin etc. can be intercepted by keylogerrs. Given a chance, these malware connect to Internet and transmits sensitive information to its source.
If you’ve been considering Mac as a safer device, it’s probably the time to re-consider your belief in Mac’s impregnable security. It still is the more secure secure option if you pit it against Windows. But it has its fair share of issues too. So, let’s acquaint you with ways to identify and terminate keyloggers on Mac.
How to Detect Keyloggers on Mac
1. Activity Monitor:
Activity Monitor contains a list of real-time events occurring on your Mac. Click the Finder icon in the Dock, select the “Go” menu and choose “Utilities”. Double-click “Activity Monitor”. Click the “Process” column label to sort your activity by processes. If you spot any unusual process, check it using Terminal. You can open Terminal from Utilities and type ‘man’ followed by a space and the process name, e.g. “man sysmond”.
2. Examine the Hardware:
Many keyloggers are hidden within the tools that connect to your keyboard. This primarily occurs in offices where more people have access to your machine. If you doubt a keylogger presence but couldn’t find it with Activity Monitor, check the connection between your keyboard and computer. If you see any unnecessary wiring, fitting or a sub-box, remove it.
See Also: 14 Best Android Security Apps
3. Virtual Keyboards:
If you find it hard to identify and terminate keylogger on Mac, you can use the virtual keyboard. Keyloggers track your keystrokes. Using a virtual keyboard would prevent the detection. Though this step wouldn’t help in recognizing and neutralizing the keylogger, it would help you be safe. Open System Preferences, select “Keyboard” and check the “Show Input Menu in Menu Bar” box. Click the Input icon in the menu bar and select “Show Keyboard Viewer” from the drop-down menu. Use this keyboard until you get your computer checked for keyloggers.
Also Read: How To Take Screenshot on Macbook Pro Touch Bar
4. Professional Security Tools:
A few security software run advanced scans that may detect Keyloggers. One way of doing this involves checking files for changes and blocking suspicious connections. There’re plethora of tools available to help you detect and vanish keyloggers. Simultaneously, you can use TuneUpMyMac to clean your Mac from various unnecessary entries. Its handy and free to download. You can run a complete scan every once in a while, to avoid sheltering the unwanted and trashy items.
Download TuneupMyMac here-
5. Reset (Reinstall macOS):
When a keylogger is too impulsive to be taken out and other options have failed to remove it, you can clear and reinstall your operating system to get rid of software-based keylogger. Be informed that hardware-based and keyloggers in the firmware won’t get away by a reset. Create a backup, restart your Mac while holding the “Option” key and use Disk Utility to format your hard drive. Quit Disk Utility and then select the option “Reinstall macOS X.”
Also Read: 27 Cool Mac Tips & Tricks You Probably Don’t Know
Overall, keyloggers are evasive. There are strong chances that you fail to identify and terminate a keylogger on Mac due to their property of being camouflaged. However, practicing the above steps would significantly help you get the ball in your court. If you face difficulties, you may contact your technical support provider.
Responses
Every month or so I get scam messages demanding payments in Bitcoins for the images of me they allegedly took using my webcam. They claim that they use keyloggers to control my computer.
So, how to know if your Mac has a keyLogger? There are two types of keyloggers: hardware and software. Examine external USB devices connected to the Mac for hardware keyloggers. Use Activity Monitor to look for unknown processes when checking for software keylogger. Check Privacy options in System Preferences for applications with too much privileges. Install tools such as Malwarebytes and MacScan and scan computer.
How do Keyloggers Work
Keylogger or keystroke logger is a spyware application that runs invisibly for users and logs (saves on the local disk or sends to the cloud) every key that users press on the computer.
Usually, keyloggers are used by hackers to collect your credit card information you enter on various web sites. They also collect your usernames and passwords, so they can steal money from your bank accounts.
The goal of a keylogger is not to collect information for as long as possible, that’s why you may never know that it was installed.
It does not suddenly slow down your computer (unless it is sending information over the internet), it does not pop up scary messages in Safari or Chrome, it does not redirect your browser to wrong web sites. It just quietly hides on your computer and gathers your data in order to use it later.
How keyloggers get installed
Typically, they get installed as part of free software you download from the Internet. The free software may contain a keylogger code inside of it so the former installs the latter on the computer.
Once installed the keyloggers starts collecting information and sends it to storage in the cloud where the hacker can access it. Keyloggers can also be installed as browser extensions.
Hardware keyloggers
There are two types of keyloggers: hardware and software. While hardware keyloggers apply mostly to desktops they are impossible to detect with the software. The hardware keylogger is usually attached to the computer and a keyboard is attached to the device.
Every time you press a key on the keyboard the device records it in its local storage and then passes the key information to the computer. If you want, you can buy a hardware keylogger on Amazon.
Software-based keystroke loggers are much more powerful because they run on the computer itself and they have access to the entire computer, not just a keyboard.
Is Keylogger Malware?
A keylogger can be either malware, like rootkit, or legitimate software installed on your computer. Commercial applications that log the keyboard input on the computer can be installed by parents who want to monitor which sites their children are visiting on the Internet. Or the company may want to track employee activities.
Believe it or not, you can easily download and install a keylogger on your own Mac. Most popular keyloggers for Mac OS are:
- Perfect Keylogger for Mac
Besides recording key presses these tools are capable of capturing screenshots, data in the clipboard, keep web browsing history.
In case of chat applications such as Skype, Viber or iMessage they can log messages from both sides: anything typed on your computer and incoming chat messages.
Some keyloggers are equipped with geolocation features. If the MacBook was stolen, they can be used to track it down because they will secretly send keystrokes and screenshots to the cloud. Keyloggers can also control your webcam and record videos or you can watch live from another computer.
You decide if it is ethical or legal to spy after children, spouse or employees. The goal of this article is to educate people about possibilities and describe ways to protect yourself from spying.
How to Install a Keylogger on Mac
To test how MacScan and Malwarebytes are capable of finding keyloggers I decided to install all four keyloggers on my Mac.
IMPORTANT: I don’t endorse any keylogger here. Moreover, if you want to avoid getting malware on your Mac, do not download software from anywhere except Apple App Store. Personally, I do not trust any of the above-mentioned keyloggers, so before installing them on my MacBook I did the following:
- Took a backup of my drive
- Reset MacBook to factory settings
- Installed and tested keyloggers so I can report my findings here
- Restored everything from the backup.
There is something fundamentally sleazy about spying after other people. No wonder that installing a keylogger reminded me of installing apps with potential viruses in it.
Elite Keylogger sent me to a jumpshare url, it didn’t let me download from their site. The problem I had with installing Elite is that its installer did not want to close, so I had to force shutdown my Mac. Check here if you want to know more about potential issues with force shutdowns.
The Perfect Keylogger sent me two emails: one with the link from which I could download an encrypted zip file and another with the password for the zip file. Google immediately flagged both messages as dangerous spam.
Spyrix and Aobo didn’t have such problems and Refog looked like a legit app with a proper installer. The interesting thing is that I was able to install all 5 of them at the same time and all four of them were recording keystrokes.
Does Malwarebytes or MacScan detect keyloggers?
Once I installed Malwarebytes it immediately recognized Elite keylogger as malware and put into quarantine. It was also able to detect Aobo and Refog. Unfortunately, it didn’t find anything wrong with Perfect Keylogger and Spyrix.
MacScan was more successful: it found 4 out of 5 apps, but it still missed Perfect Keylogger.
Keylogger For Mac Os
Conclusion: If you want to install a keylogger on your Mac go with Perfect one from Blazing tools. It didn’t get detected by either Malwarebytes or MacScan.
But again, do it at your own risk. If you ask my opinion, I would never install such an application on the computer where I entered my credit card information or password to my bank accounts.
On the other hand, I was disappointed with Malwarebytes and MacScan missing some apps. This experiment does not give me high confidence in malware protection tools.
So, what would I recommend you do if you believe that there is a keylogger app on your MacBook? Reset and reinstall your MacOS and immediately change all passwords for all web sites you were using.
Keylogger myths
Some people suggest a couple of workarounds that in their opinion can trick keyloggers. One of them is to use software-based keyboards. You can start such a keyboard by going to System Preferences and clicking on the “Keyboard” icon.
In “Input Sources” tab click on “Show input menu in menu bar”. Once you do it you can see a keyboard icon in the top bar near the battery icon. If you click on that icon and select “Show Keyboard Viewer” it will bring a software keyboard which you can use to type information and which supposedly will not be tracked by a keylogger.
Another workaround is to type a part of the password or the credit card number in the browser, then bring up a text editor, type a garbage text in it, switch back to the browser and type the second part of the secret password.
These workarounds possibly worked a long time ago when malware was not sophisticated, but now when they can take screenshots and have some intelligent software, I would not rely on the workarounds anymore.
How to Detect Keylogger on Mac with Activity Monitor
Some people suggest checking for malware in Activity Monitor. The typical suggestion is to bring up the Activity Monitor and find the application that looks suspicious or you do not recognize.
This advice may work for someone who knows all applications running on Mac, but for an average user, all applications running on Mac are unfamiliar.
I am not claiming this is impossible however. For instance, Spyrix Keylogger appear in Activity Monitor as skm, and Perfect Keylogger as DashboardClient.
What to do when getting a scam email?
As said in the beginning everyone is getting emails which state that they set up malware on the certain web sites and “your browser began working as a RDP that has a key logger which provided me access to your display as well as cam”. It continues with a threat to send embarrassing information to your friends unless “you will make the payment via Bitcoin”.
Normally, these emails end up in a Spam folder, but if you are using an email other than Gmail chances are that they will appear in your Inbox. So, what should you do in this case? The answer is to Delete the email. This is called extortion
The hackers send such emails to millions of people with the hope that someone will be scared and will pay a ransom. They do not install keyloggers, it is cheaper to scare people by sending emails then target specific people.
How to Detect Commercial Keyloggers on Mac?
If you suspect that someone you know (your employer, spouse, parent, friend or enemy) is spying after you chances are that they installed one of the commercial keyloggers.
There is very little chance that they were able to find a malware soft built by hackers to infect your system because the malware will be sending your information to the hacker, not your personal enemy.
If you are looking to find if commercial keyloggers have been installed on your Mac, there are three ways to find: using Activity Monitor, checking default key combinations and checking the list of application with Full Disk Access.
Using Activity Monitor
Activity Monitor is still a good way to quickly find applications as long as you know their names:
- Perfect Keylogger appears as DashboardClient in the monitor
- Spyrix as skm
- Look for ‘coreservicesd’ to find Aobo
- Check for ‘Elite Keylogger’ when searching Elite Keylogger. However, the version I installed was free and it did not hide, so I don’t know how the process name will change for someone who buys a product.
- And finally, ‘Refog’ appears as ‘syslogd’
Note: there are legit services called ‘syslogd‘ and ‘coreservicesd‘, so their presence doesn’t necessarily mean that you have a keylogger. To find out if the Mac was infected, scan it with the free version of Malwarebytes.
Using default key combinations
All keyloggers have secret key combinations which will bring them from the place they are hiding to the screen. After all, if you can get to the data collected by a keylogger it is pretty much useless.
Keylogger For Macbook
Default key combinations for keyloggers are:
But, what if whoever was installing the spyware was smart enough to change the default key combination. Then you won’t be able to find keyloggers by a key combination.
Check which applications have Full Disk Access
In order to do their job, most keyloggers must have full access to the disk or accessibility option.
Go to System Preferences -> Security and Privacy, click on the Privacy tab and check two sections: Accessibility and Full Disk Access.
Here how it may look like on your Mac if the app was installed:
How to Detect Malware Keystroke Loggers on Mac?
If you think that your Mac was infected by a keylogger when you’ve been browsing the internet or opened an email then steps above will not help because hackers do not use commercial keyloggers as malware.
You can still try to open the Activity Monitor, go over each process in it and search Google for the process name. This way, you can at least eliminate the good applications from the keyloggers (note, however, a good process can still be infected with a malware which installs a keylogger on Mac).
For instance, if you don’t know what “cloudd” process is on Mac then Google following:
cloudd mac
The first response will say something like “This process is part of macOS and is related to iCloud”. So now you can move to the next process in the list.
Another option is to install Malwarebytes, MacScan, Intego Mac Internet Security or another antivirus and antimalware application. Some people suggested ReiKey for keystroke logger detection, but last time I checked the code was not updated for more than 8 months, which means is not being actively maintained.
And finally, the best way to get rid off a malware is remove the macOS and reinstall everything from scratch.
Other resources:
If you still feel that you are being watched then:
- buy a webcam cover: recommended webcam covers for MacBooks
- check my other article:How to Tell if Someone is Remotely Accessing Your Mac
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