Homeland Security Keyloggers Found in Dell PCs
Big Brother is indeed watching you, my friends. Do you have a Dell(God, I hope not) One man found a keylogger connected to the integrated Ethernet board of his Dell PC. He spoke to Dell and wrote to Homeland Security. You’ll be amazed by their reply.
**UPDATE – This turned out to be a hoax. **
He states, ” I was opening up my almost brand new Dell 600m laptop, to replace a broken PCMCIA slot riser on the motherboard. As soon as I got the keyboard off, I noticed a small cable running from the keyboard connection underneath a piece of metal protecting the motherboard. I figured “No Big Deal”, and continued with the dissasembly. Being an EE by trade, this piqued my curiosity considerably. On one side of the board, one Atmel AT45D041A four megabit Flash memory chip.”
What could this mean I called Dell tech support about it, and they said, and I quote, “The intregrated service tag identifier is there for assisting customers in the event of lost or misplaced personal information.” He then hung up. A little more research, and I found that that board spliced in between the keyboard and the ethernet chip is little more than a Keyghost hardware keylogger. I called the police, as having a keylogger unknown to me in my laptop is a serious offense. They told me to call the Department of Homeland Security. At this point, I am in disbelief. Why would the DHS have a keylogger in my laptop It was surreal. they told me to submit a Freedom of Information Act request. This is what I got back:
May 18th, 2011
Woooooooooooooooooowwww. I wonder what the legal implications would be for such a random breach in privacy. Either they are randomly doing this. Or if you made the order by phone, they deliberately installed this in connection with some interest they had in you. I think it is the former. And that my friend could be a problem…..Im looking into it.