HP laptops found to have hidden keylogger http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42309371 HP releases Synaptics driver update that removes disabled keylogger https://www.ghacks.net/2017/12/10/h...river-update-that-removes-disabled-keylogger/
If it becomes enabled, means you have been hacked, which is an even bigger problem making the said issue irrelevant.
HP was the first to patch expect other OEM's to follow: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/12/11/hp_synaptics_keylogger/
I would say it is worse than that. Getting hacked implies a third party criminal broke into your system which is something the user can do things to prevent. This is a feature, designed and implemented by the PC manufacturer in their own proprietary closed source driver which of course they can activate at any time via their own updates manager, or other administrative software preinstalled on the machine. The article mentioned another similar, earlier discovery in HP's audio driver which controlled functions of the microphone and dumped captured data in a public folder. The part of the article which left me most incredulous was the authors closing remarks. "I don't know what to make of all this. Is it bad quality controlling over at HP?" Does he seriously think that or is it some form of journalist etiquette/political correctness, that prevents these guys from saying it how it so obviously is. These large tech corporations are all facilitating surveillance and spying and what we commonly call malware are their business tools!!
About six years back, I was using spyshelter. It warned me keylogging activity by synaptic applications. I reported the problem to spyshelter, tested their beta builds till the problem got fixed and I no longer got alerts from spyshelter about synaptic. But as a matter of caution till now I always disable synaptic startup and services after a fresh install or a windows upgrade. Now I can't use some advanced touchpad functions but I feel safer.
