I have been feeling safe for a while because of using LastPass which auto fills my username and password on web forms and also using KeyScrambler when I needed to type password into applications such as Windows Live Messenger, PuTTy, CuteFTP and etc… KeyScrambler seems light with very little memory usage but it does make me feel that there’s a little lag especially during typing because it needs to encrypt and decrypt the keystrokes. From my KeyScrambler review post, there is a commenter from Poland suggesting NextGen AntiKeylogger, a KeyScrambler alternative.
I checked out the official website of NextGen AntiKeylogger and the features are quite similar to KeyScrambler with also 3 version (free, pro and ultimate). Fortunately MaxSecurity Lab, the company that creates NextGen AntiKeylogger offers fully functional 15 days trial. I downloaded NextGen AntiKeylogger 3.3 Ultimate and installed on my test computer to see if it can prevent keyloggers from logging my keystrokes.
I tried typing on Notepad in Windows 7 32-bit and see if the 7 keyloggers plus 3 Remote Administration Tool trojan that has keylogger function is able to capture the encrypted or clear text.
REFOG Keylogger – FAIL
Elite Keylogger – FAIL
Award Keylogger Pro – PASS
All In One Keylogger – PASS
Ardamax Keylogger – PASS
Revealer Keylogger Pro – PASS
WebWATCHER – PASS
DarkComet RAT – PASS
CyberGate RAT – PASS
BlackShades RAT – PASS
From the results above, NextGen AntiKeylogger is unable to protect keystrokes against REFOG Keylogger and Elite Keylogger as they are able to capture real text instead of the encrypted text. If you look at the NextGen AntiKeylogger official website, it says “NextGen AntiKeylogger, as seen from its name, is the next generation anti-keylogger program which protects your data against all types of keylogging programs both known, unknown or being developed right now”. As you can see how important it is to really put a software into test rather than spending 30 minutes or less “blogging” about it.
The first problem which I’ve encountered is it causes Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) when I run Google Chrome 11. My guess is NextGen AntiKeylogger is not yet updated to support the latest Chrome 11. If you didn’t know, keystroke encryption software such as KeyScrambler and NextGen AntiKeylogger only works on supported software and not all.
There is an interesting option which keeps the protection enabled even if NextGen AntiKeylogger is not running or terminated. I enabled the option, terminated the antikeylogger process (NextGenAkl.exe) from Windows Task Manager and the encryption immediately stop working. KeyScrambler wins on this one because this security feature is hard coded and you cannot enable or disable it.
NextGen AntiKeylogger doesn’t have a convenient hotkey to easily enable or disable the protection but KeyScrambler has it which is Ctrl + Shift + K by default. I programmed an executable macro using AutoHotkey to simulate the pressing the hotkey to see if I can disable KeyScrambler by just running it but KeyScrambler is not vulnerable to this flaw.
The only option that NextGen AntiKeylogger has but KeyScrambler doesn’t is the password protection where you can prevent unauthorized users from disabling the protection and accessing the options. KeyScrambler is slightly more expensive than NextGen AntiKeylogger but it is definitely worth the money.