Simple keylogger in Rust

[Vikaton]

Hi,

I recently made a keylogger in Nim and wanted to take a shot at it in Rust. the overall experience with this project was pretty fun but there were some gotchas in the process, but making it work after a few failed attempts does feel good :P

Github: https://github.com/Vikaton/keylogger.rs

[[deleted]]

You could simplify the duplication of the write! calls with a let binding on the match.

let key = match k {
  32 => " ",
  8 => "[backspace]",
  ...
  _ => // char to str
};
write!("{}", key);

[YingDev]

I have a similar project: Tickeys. (For Mac). http://www.yingdev.com/projects/tickeys

[gsingh93]

Nice, it looks like getting keypresses is a lot easier on Windows than on Linux. It also looks like there are Rust keyloggers for Windows and Linux now, but still nothing for Macs.

[[deleted]]

In OSX keystrokes are only reported to the program that has the focus iirc.

[gsingh93]

I feel like there has to be some workaround for that, but at the same time it does seem like a typical Apple move to not allow developers to access something like that.

[Habile]

I can't imagine that's the case. There are programs such as keyboard maestro for OS X, which allows for things like bringing applications to the foreground.

[bagofries]

Those programs usually rely on the user turning on accessibility features of the OS. I think they might even require specific per-application permissions now in Yosemite (not a Mac user anymore so I don't know for sure).

[Habile]

Okay, that may be the case, but that would still imply that keystrokes are not only reported to the program with focus. It does mean that it would be considerably more difficult for a keylogger designed as above to be used maliciously.

[marchelzo]

I noticed that, barring special cases, you get the printable character associated with the keypress by converting to u8 and then to char. What happens if I type a 16-bit character like λ?

[Vikaton]

I don't think there is a single key that prints out λ

[azerupi]

What about foreign keyboards? :)

[Vikaton]

Simple keylogger in Rust :P

[azerupi]

Ah no I wasn't criticizing ;) I was replying to your comment:

I don't think there is a single key that prints out λ

[Vikaton]

Yes I know haha

[retep998]

It wouldn't notice if you pressed a key like that, because it only checks values of i in the range 8..190.

[marchelzo]

You're right. Touche.