keylogger

demo.mp4

keylogger is a Windows and Linux keylogging application that can capture and record global keypress events. Keypress events can be logged to a file on the victim PC or transmitted over the network to a remote server using UDP.

Building

To build the project locally, you will need the following libraries and tools installed:

• CMake3.27+
• C++ compiler supporting C++20 features
• Doxygen
• Visual Studio 2022 (Windows Only)
• X11 Developer Libs (Linux Only)

Note Older versions of Visual Studio may work as well. I only tested with VS2022 because that is what I had available. To try out an older version, update the generator arg in the first cmake command located in the scripts/windows/build.bat script.

To build the project on Windows/Linux, change directory to the scripts/[windows|linux] directory and run build.[bat|sh].

After a successful build, you will find the binary installed to keylogger/bin/.

Program Usage

keylogger must be configured prior to compiling. Application configurations can be found in src/keylogger/keylogger.cpp. From within the source, one can set the recording mode, one of either text or network, as well as additional configurations associated with the chosen mode. This form of configuration while cumbersome was intentionally chosen to make the keylogger application easier to deploy under certain circumstances (e.g., when conducting a buffer overflow attack).

To run the keylogger, run the executable: ./keylogger on Linux and keylogger.exe on Windows.

To terminate the keylogger, type "klexit" on the victim PC or simply kill the process.

Running the Tests

keylogger has been unit tested using the GoogleTest framework in conjunction with ctest. To run the tests, build the project and change directory to keylogger/build/. Run ctest to execute all unit tests.

Doxygen Docs

This project is documented using Doxygen. Doxygen docs are built automatically by both the Windows and Linux build script. Docs can be found under keylogger/docs/keylogger/.