HP Says Keylogger Was Just Non-Disabled Debugging Tool, Updates Driver

[Guest]

After it was revealed that an audio driver installed on several HP laptops was keylogging, HP issued a driver update and stated that it was just a debugging tool that wasn't disabled prior to launch.

HP Says Keylogger Was Just Non-Disabled Debugging Tool, Updates Driver : Read more

 

[captaincharisma]

HP's PR is just as bad as their computers lol

 

[Alex-Nigma]

As a programmer with 7 years under my belt I cannot come up with ANY necessity to have a key-logger as a debugging tool in audio drivers. Any ideas?

 

[Robert Pankiw]

@Alex-Nigma Sure, if the keyboard is used to affect audio settings (FN keys) then it would make some sense that they want to review all keys pressed and how that affected the audio, especially if they used non-standard keys for at least one model, and wanted to have a single, unified driver but didn't want the non-standard keys to affect computers that didn't implement it.

 

[Mister-S]

Yeah, sure it was. I believe you HP, (NOT)!!!

 

[Travisty2]

I do totally believe this. Though I assume this is done in C so some lazy programmer forgot to put in pre-compiler statements around the key logger.
Bad for the team too to have missed it in code review.

 

[mrmez]

I hate the litigious reputation Americans have, but when the hell are people going to start suing companies for stuff like this?

Fking with their cash is the only way you'll hold them to any form of standard or accountability.
Right now they just shrug their shoulders and give you the finger.

 

[spentshells]

Right.......

 

[derekullo]

John: Ted remember to remove that keylogger we were using for testing from that HP audio driver.

Ted: Sure, as soon as I find where the hot pockets are.

"Ted frantically searches for 5 minutes before finding his beloved hot pockets"

"Ted tosses his hot pockets into the microwave and pushes the hot pockets button"

"Ted eats his tasty hot pockets"

Ted: What was John saying I had to do?

Ted: Meh, never-mind probably wasn't important

 

[eviling]

Why on earth is the debugging tool sent out along with the driver?

 

[captaincharisma]

I hate the litigious reputation Americans have, but when the hell are people going to start suing companies for stuff like this?

Fking with their cash is the only way you'll hold them to any form of standard or accountability.
Right now they just shrug their shoulders and give you the finger.

lol American's sue over the most humorous thing like if there phone gets a sctratch. nobody sue's HP because everyone knows to stay away from them

 

[shrapnel_indie]

Why on earth is the debugging tool sent out along with the driver?

Because the debugging "tool" is integrated into the code for testing purposes. It's not just a compiler option that one can set for Debug mode code and have turned off for Production code.... well, depends on the compiler/assembler too.

 

[Kevin-M]

HP is about as low and trustworthy as our government. Anyone that says they did not purposely put this in the driver is kidding themselves!

 

[anthonymaw]

IMHO Nice cover story for yet another NSA back door that got exposed. Makes you wonder what else has debugging keylogger software in the drivers that was forgotten about.

 

[Christopher1]

I doubt that this was done by accident. As an earlier poster pointed out this feature does not make sense for an audio driver. Keylogging for an audio driver? Uh... no!