Assessment of Windows 7 Operating System security against Keyloggers

Abstract

The Windows operating system predominates all operating systems among computer users. Indeed, 85% of worldwide computers are on the Windows operating system. To be more specific, 55% of those Windows users are running on the Windows 7 operating system. Since Windows 7 is widely used, computer hackers see Windows 7 as a valuable target for unethical hacking. Consequently, Windows 7 must be able to identify any malicious program or activity that a computer hacker could use to harm a Windows 7 user. In this work, I assess the security level of Windows 7 by creating a keylogger, a program that has the ability to record all the user’s keystrokes. A keylogger is one of the many programs that computer hackers implement to retrieve passwords, usernames, credit card information, and other vital information. The keylogger in this work is made in 2 levels: a simple and complex keylogger. The questions are: does Windows 7 identify the 2 keyloggers and how does Windows 7 recognize the keyloggers? In order to see how Windows 7 identifies the keyloggers, various levels of security are implemented on the Windows 7 machine. In other words, the keyloggers are initially running in an environment with no protection programs or updates and later tested in an environment with all security parameters that Windows 7 offers. This assessment reveals how secure Windows 7 must be against keyloggers and how dangerous keyloggers need to be until they are considered malicious by Windows 7.