Is this possible?

[UALOneKPlus]

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/03/06/internet.theft.ap/index.html

Two suspects arrested in Web bank theft

TOKYO, Japan (AP) --Two men were arrested for allegedly hacking into bank accounts through the Internet and stealing $136,000, police said Thursday.

Police suspect 35-year-old Ko Hakata, a former computer software developer who is now unemployed, and Goro Nakahashi, a 27-year-old businessman, robbed the unidentified bank's accounts from a computer at a Tokyo cafe September 18.

The men allegedly downloaded software from the Internet that detects what keys previous users of the computer punched, police said.

They then figured out the passwords that five people had used to access their bank accounts online, and transferred a total of $141,000 from those accounts to another bank, police said. Using an alias, Nakahashi allegedly withdrew $136,000, police said.

Facing prison
Police refused to say when the two men -- who haven't been charged -- were detained. They also would not comment on what happened to the $5,000 that was not withdrawn, saying only $136,000 had been stolen. If charged with theft, they could face up to 10 years in prison.

The Asahi newspaper, a major national daily, said the two men allegedly tried to use about 100 computers at 13 different Internet cafes around Tokyo.

The newspaper cited police sources saying they are thought to have robbed accounts at Citibank Japan. Citibank officials were not immediately available to comment.

Is it possible to download software which actually detects previous key strokes??? I'm not aware that PC's are capable of storing key stroke info, unless they did it BEFORE hand, and the keystroke logger captured the key strokes, which would make more sense...

Also, who's dumb enough to use a public PC to log onto their bank accounts? I never use public PC's for anything but browse web sites, not even logging into my Hotmail accounts...

[cfitz]

I think the latter interpretation of the story is correct. They downloaded key capture software, installed it, then came back later to see what it had recorded. Anyway, that is how I interpreted the story. And no, there is no general way to recover keystrokes after the fact if they weren't captured at the time they were pressed.

cfitz

[BatGnat]

Even MS wouldnt put something like keystroke recording into a OS, if they did they would not make one cent out of Governments. FBI/CIA/etc would refuse to run it.

[dodecahedron]

Even MS wouldnt put something like keystroke recording into a OS, if they did they would not make one cent out of Governments. FBI/CIA/etc would refuse to run it.

that's assuming people even knew about this...
how many dark secrets are hidden in Windows ???

[average_joe83]

This is very much possible
In the very earily days of computers and dos there were alot of key loggers, what these guys did could have been very easily done, an older key logger is only about 400k(MS-DOS) at the max, and can be run under windows, it could have even been run from a disk!