This watches for the user's log on and password, and reports the keystrokes back to the attackers.
Nowadays, a couple of keystrokes can do the same thing with a lot less fuss.Yet carbon paper persists.
"Until we secure our cyber-infrastructure, a few keystrokes and an Internet connection is all one needs to disable the economy and endanger lives," Lamar Smith, a Texas congressman, told a judiciary committee in February.
Not surprisingly, the result is self-indulgent in places: Mr Wolfram lists every model of computer and programming language he has used since childhood, and estimates that while writing the book, he typed 100 million keystrokes and moved his computer mouse more than 100 miles.None of which bodes well for the book's content.
Four out of five of them had been attacked by Trojan horses that sniffed out confidential information by logging keystrokes, recording internet sites visited, and reporting the findings to a third party.
This allows remote command-and-control servers anywhere on the internet to install additional software, capture keystrokes and images on the screen, and ferret around the local network.Mandiant says the hackers sometimes used malicious remote-access toolkits readily available on the "dark side" of the internet (if not through your average Google search).
He considers his 500-strong company his personal intellectual playground, thinking nothing of tasking researchers with assessing his impact in the field of complexity theory or analysing 20 years' worth of computer keystrokes to boost his efficiency.
At its most toxic, by contrast, mobile malware can collect personal data and contact lists, monitor keystrokes, track the phone's location, even take photographs or video of users and their surroundings.
These camouflage themselves as harmless pieces of software and lie dormant in the network, examining the keystrokes pressed by people as they use computer programs, accessing data in the system's memory and stealing passwords and files.
And once a system has been hacked, malware can steal secrets, record keystrokes, capture camera and microphone feeds, and even inject arbitrary keystrokes or mouse movements to impersonate the owner often without their knowledge until the operating system is reinstalled or the computer gets replaced.
These not only open "back doors", but can track a user's keystrokes, uncover passwords, and turn a compromised computer into a "zombie", taking orders from a remote user.
