If the cryptographic hash values match then the firmware or software is unmodified. This is usually done by obtaining from the manufacturer a cryptographic hash of the firmware or software for the component and computing the cryptographic hash of the software currently in use on the system in question. This would require you to find the firmware or software for each component in the chain and verify that it has not been tampered with.

This includes the chain from the keyboard controller IC firmware, keyboard controller device driver, OS level USB subsystem, keyboard buffer, and shell software.

However most modern keyloggers are software or firmware based and thus may only be defended against by software security methods. Frequent or periodic checks of the seals must then be performed to verify that the hardware's integrity is intact. You would need a initial check to insure that no physical keylogger exists then attach or install the seals. The physical components are few and various tamper evident seals may be used to assure the integrity of the physical system. The traditional keylogger is a hardware device that intercepts data between the the keyboard and the intake of character data at the Keyboard Controller (mostly USB Device, HID Keyboard). Is there any way to (partially) defeat keylogger attacks against system-level password entry on OS X? (Either a replaced keyboard with the logger hidden inside, or something attached on its' USB cord.) Tl dr: Is there any way to (partially) defeat keylogger attacks against system-level password entry on OS X?Įdit: Because I'm not here to discuss the feasibility of keyloggers on OS X, let's presume I'm talking about defending against a physical keylogger being injected into my keyboard's data pipeline. In other secure systems I use, there's an option to enter a final part of the password using the mouse or similar, to help avoid keyloggers making an attacker's job too difficult. I'm (perhaps unreasonably) afraid of keyloggers, as these are the only method I can think of short of a system-level vulnerability or physically watching (or recording) my activities when entering the password.

There's several places in my ‘personal security infrastructure’ (is there a better phrase for that?) where I find myself typing very important passwords into text-fields on OS X (for instance, dis-encrypting and mounting thumbdrives containing very sensitive data.)

Mac os keylogger