Hp Laptop Just Stopped Reading My Usb Drive
Many HP laptops released in 2015 and 2016 have a major problem. The audio driver provided by Conexant has debugging lawmaking enabled, and it either logs all your keystrokes to a file or prints them to the system debug log, where malware could snoop on them without looking likewise suspicious. Here's how to check if your PC is afflicted.
Why Is My HP Laptop Logging My Keystrokes?
RELATED: Keyloggers Explained: What You lot Need to Know
HP says it has no access to this data, and the keylogger in question does non appear to be malicious. There's no evidence that the keylogger really does annihilation with the keystrokes it captures beyond saving them to your PC. However, this could be dangerous, as that sensitive log of keystrokes would be available to malware and may be stored in backups. In other words, it's not malice—merely incompetence.
This appears to be debugging code in the Conexant sound driver, code which should have been removed by Conexant before the driver shipped on PCs. The role of the commuter which listens for media shortcut keys automatically logs the keys it sees you lot printing. It was discovered by researchers from Modzero.
How to Check if the Keylogger Is Agile
There appears to be different behavior on different HP laptops, depending on the version of the audio driver they include. On many laptops, the keylogger writes keystrokes to the C:\Users\Public\MicTray.log file. This file is wiped at each boot, just information technology may be captured and stored in system backups.
Navigate to C:\Users\Public\ and see if you have a MicTray.log file. Double-click it to view the contents. If you see information about your keystrokes, you lot take the trouble commuter installed.
If you do see data in this file, you'll want to delete the MicTray.log file from whatsoever system backups it may exist a role of to ensure the records of your keystrokes are erased. You lot should also delete the MicTray.log file from here to erase the record of your keystrokes.
Even if you don't meet the MicTray.log file, your HP laptop may take previously been recording keystrokes to this file before it downloaded an automatic update that stopped information technology. You should examine any backups created of your PC and remove the MicTray.log file, if you run into it.
On our HP Spectre x360, we saw the MicTray.log file just information technology was 0 KB in size. However, even if no data is being printed to this file, every single keystroke y'all type may be printed via the Windows OutputDebugString API. Any application running in the electric current user account can view this debugging information and capture every keystroke you lot type, without doing anything that would appear suspicious to antivirus programs.
To check whether this is happening, download and run Microsoft's DebugView application. Await at the DebugView application and press some keys on your keyboard.
If the Conexant audio driver is capturing keystrokes and press them as debug messages, y'all'll see many "Mic target" lines, each with a scancode. The information on each line identifies the central you pressed, and then this information could be decoded to capture each primal you press in the lodge you press them, if an awarding was listening in to the debug log on your PC.
If you lot don't see a MicTray.log file with keystrokes in it and you don't take whatsoever "Mic target" output visible in DebugView, congratulations. Your organization does non have the buggy sound driver software installed and running.
How to Stop the Keylogger
If you exercise see the MicTray.log file filled with data or y'all tin can run across the "Mic target" debug output visible in DebugView, y'all have the dangerous keylogging sound driver installed and you lot should disable or remove it.
Fixes to this problem will arrive via Windows Update on the afflicted laptops. A fix for laptops released in 2016 was added to Windows Update on May 11, while a set for laptops released in 2015 is set to arrive on May 12. Caput to Settings > Update & security > Windows Update to ensure you have the latest updates.
If the fix hasn't been released even so, or you tin can't run Windows Update for some reason, y'all can remove the software that causes the problem. You volition need to delete the MicTray.exe or MicTray64.exe file. This volition prevent some media function keys on your keyboard from functioning, but that's a temporary pocket-sized price to pay for security.
Get-go, open up the Task Managing director by correct-clicking your taskbar and selecting "Task Manager". Click "More than details", click the "Details" tab, locate either MicTray64.exe or MicTray.exe in the list, right-click information technology, and select "Finish Task".
Adjacent, locate the MicTray executable file on your organization and delete it. The researchers indicate that this file is often establish at either C:\Windows\system32\MicTray.exe or C:\Windows\system32\MicTray64.exe . However, on our system, nosotros found information technology at C:\Plan Files\CONEXANT\MicTray\MicTray64.exe .
When Windows Update installs an updated driver in the future, it should install a new MicTray executable that volition ready the trouble and re-enable your keyboard's function keys.
Photograph Credit: Amanz Network/Flickr
Source: https://www.howtogeek.com/307311/how-to-check-if-your-hp-laptop-has-the-conexant-keylogger/
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