Re: FL Demonstrates Fatal Flaw in Logins

Sorry to all, but I'm not seeing what would appear to be obvious.
There seems to be a lot of talk about FV "new program" that undermines
security of computer login/credit cards over the net and such like that. I
don't know about you guys, but I wrote stuff like that in sixth grade on
the old apple IIe. It's pretty simple to write a programs that attaches
itself to the keyboard driver and logs the text types, or only logs certain
parts, what is the large deal? As it applies to internet security, I don't
see how it can make a difference. It must be run from the local computer,
at system level. If I'm on my home computer, I know what's running, and
feel safe that a loging program isn't amung them. What would enable a
remote site to pick up my typings.
However, I don't know much about Java, would it be possible to make such an
applet with Java?

--Joseph

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Joseph Sokol-Margolis                                   joseph@genome.wi.mit.edu
Assistant Systems Administrator                                     seph@mit.edu
Whitehead Institute/MIT
Center for Genome Research                                 phone: (617) 252-1922
One Kendall Sq. Bldg. 300                                    fax: (617) 252-1902
Cambridge, MA 02139-1561
----------------------http://www-genome.wi.mit.edu/~joseph/-----------------
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> However, I don't know much about Java, would it be possible to make such an
> applet with Java?

	<Sigh>, Java: the new 'net boogey-man (next to keyboard sniffers,
of course :).  The functionallity is not there for arbitrary keyboard
sniffing.  An applet can only see kbd events in windows in it's heirarchy,
upto the toplevel window wich is embeded in the browser (and in any 
toplevel windows, but these all have the "Untrusted Applet Window" warning
at the bottom).

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