Keylogger discovered in HP laptop audio drivers

Swiss security company Modzero has found a keylogger hidden in HP’s driver package for Windows PCs.

The keylogger was found inside an audio driver developed by audio chip manufacturer Conexant and was made available through the HP website.

According to Modzero, the aim of the software was to recognise when a certain key was pressed.

However, the driver broadcasts all keystrokes through a debugging interface or writes the data to a public directory on the user’s storage drive.

Modzero said this effectively turns the software into spyware, and found that the keylogger has existed on HP devices since the end of 2015.

A new version of the program worsened the situation by writing all keystroke logs to a user-readable file in the “C:/Users/Public/” directory.

Modzero said all HP users should check if the following programs are installed and delete them immediately.

• C:\Windows\System32\MicTray64.exe
• C:\Windows\System32\MicTray.exe

HP EliteBook, ProBook, and ZBook devices running on Windows 7 and Windows 10 are potentially affected.

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