Earlier this week, researcher Michael Myng discovered a deactivated keylogger in 460 HP laptop models. While attempting to control the backlight of HP laptop keyboards, Myng discovered interesting code when given the script to the keyboard, and immediately notified HP, the company of the laptop.

“HP most likely reacted with more caution just to make sure they do not lose business, and to make sure nothing bad happens,” freshman Matthew Sherrill said. Along with Sherrill agrees freshman Ross Tharp.

“This issue could of potentially ruined the company in the future,” Tharp said.

In computers, a keylogger is a program that sends characters typed by the user to a possible attacker, sending the attacker potentially all information you type into the computer. Although the keylogger was proven to be found in the laptops, they were also discovered to be deactivated, so no user has currently given any information to attackers through their laptop.

“Although it was deactivated and the problem was fixed, this could have been a world wide crisis with stolen information, credit card fraud, and lawsuits,” Tharp said. “All of this could have been reality if a hacker only spent 5 minutes of his time to activate a keylogger nobody knew about.”

Sherrill also noted that HP ‘dodged a bullet’ with the help of Myng. “If I knew I potentially [might’ve] given away all of my information unintentionally I would be very mad,” Sherrill said.

After responding to Myng’s email containing the information about the keylogger, HP released an update removing the keylogger from affected laptops. This isn’t the first time HP has dealth with this problem, either. Earlier this year a similar keylogger was mistakenly included pre-installed wiith several models of HP laptops in their audio files.

“HP probably reacted fast on this one because it has happened in the past which they got lucky it wasn’t activated,” Sherrill said. “They most likely didn’t want this one to end out differently than the last one.”

HP has advised everyone with an HP laptop to update their software to remove the keylogger from their computer.

“I defenitely will,” Sherril said.