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Keystroke Logging Software and Removal Instructions


During the summer of 2002, the United States Secret Service was investigating several nationwide computer intrusions/hacking incidents and requested its field offices to contact system administrators at colleges and universities in their districts to address the issue. These incidents involved the surreptitious insertion of software programs specializing in "key logging".

To date, all known incidents have been restricted to college and university computer systems. The motives of the perpetrators and the number of computer systems compromised remains unknown. In efforts to avert the potential compromise of computer users' privacy, the Secret Service has recommended a nationwide "alert" to all colleges and universities.

Key logger software is a program, which causes every keystroke made on the computer to be recorded. The program can remain completely undetected and is initiated when the computer is turned on. The key logger records everything outgoing to include emails, documents, login names, passwords, and credit card numbers etc.

IMPORTANT ** THE FOLLOWING INSTRUCTION ONLY PERTAIN TO FACULTY STUDENTS AND STAFF OF TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY: If any of these keylogging utilities are found on your PC, please do not delete them, but contact CIS's Information Technology Issues Management team at ITIM@tamu.edu. Thank you for your cooperation in this matter.









TAMU System administrators and/or IT specialists are strongly encouraged to conduct an internal query of their respective computer networks using the technical file names provided above to determine if any identified key logger software has been installed. Students should understand that this list is not necessarily all-inclusive. This culprit or culprits may be using other files not listed above, consequently students should take note of any computer anomalies.

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Last Modified: November 3, 2004

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Texas A&M University
Computing & Information Services
Information Technology Issues Management
Phone: (979)845-9254, Fax: (979)845-2704
Teague Building, Room 322
College Station, TX 77843
e-mail address itim

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