Information Security News: Six-year-old installs keylogger on MP's computer

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/108769/sixyearold-installs-keylogger-on-mps-computer.html

By Simon Aughton
26th March 2007

A six-year-old girl has successfully hacked into the UK Parliament's 
computer system, installing a keylogger onto an MPs machine.

Guildford MP Anne Milton agreed to leave her computer unattended for 60 
seconds as part of a test of House of Commons IT security by the BBC's 
Inside Out programme.

Brianagh, a schoolgirl from Winchester, took just a quarter of that time 
to install the keylogging software without being noticed. Such easily 
available applications record all the keystrokes made on a machine and 
can therefore be used to steal passwords, financial data and personal 
information.

Everything that Milton would have typed for the next six months would 
have been secretly recorded and it would only have taken a few seconds 
to retrieve the software and all the confidential information it had 
gathered, including the password for the whole computer.

'It really surprises me,' Milton told Inside Out. 'It's the speed, the 
size of the device and the ease with which it was attached to my 
computer.'

The House of Commons administration declined to comment.


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