Odd keyboard behaviour - possible keylogger?

[SLG2]

I recently did a fresh install of Manjaro XFCE.

While I was setting up my computer, my computer slowed down to an extent that I found alarming. This issue later resolved itself, perhaps because I had decreased my swappiness, but I am still not clear on what caused the slowness, which I had never experienced before.

During the (slow) installation process, I got a popup notification that Sticky Keys were enabled. I then got a popup notification that Slow Keys were enabled. However, when I checked my Accessiblity settings, neither Sticky Keys nor Slow Keys were enabled. I also briefly experienced an issue with my keyboard not outputting anything to my screen. For a brief period, when I typed onto the keyboard, nothing was output. This issue later resolved itself.

These issues (unwarranted slowness, odd keyboard behaviour) make me wonder if I have a keylogger and, if so, how I can detect and remove it.

[zbe]

“What’s as big as a house, burns 20 litres of fuel every hour, puts out a shitload of smoke and noise, and cuts an apple into three pieces?”

– A Soviet machine made to cut apples into four pieces!

(replace with your keylogger where appropriate)

[TriMoon]

@SLG2 Hi and welcome to the Forum

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Please read and follow all advice in this thread:

[HowTo] Request support

Difficulty: ★☆☆☆☆ Strong of its many members, the Manjaro support forum can provide you help whenever you have an issue with your Manjaro installation. But in order to work efficiently, we shall also ask you to follow three major points. Provide context Simply signaling an issue is rarely enough to understand how it occurred. It is thus important to provide details on how it happened: Detail prior actions leading to the issue. List solutions and guides you already tried, with links when…

Especially:

[HowTo] Post command output and file content as formatted text

Difficulty: ★☆☆☆☆ Formatting differences Discourse – this forum’s engine – uses Markdown to format its posts, and removes “unnecessary” whitespace. Terminal commands often produce output formatted so that they are better readable by the user, taking advantage of the monospaced font used. Programming code often rely on indentation to make it more readable. Using preformatting in Markdown Markdown includes a pattern to provide preformatting when necessary. You only need to put the part to f…

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A keylogger does not slowdown your PC in anyway, it is your machine that is too weak to handle stuff…

People might be able to optimize some stuff for you IF you post your hardware info…

[SLG2]

My CPU is 11th Gen Intel(R) Core™ i5-1135G7 @ 2.40GHz

My RAM is 8 GB (which I realize isn’t much)

However, my primary concern is not system performance, but the possible presence of a keylogger

[Hanzel]

The experienced behavior described, to me, is the behavior that can occur during an installation.
Depending on the hardware this can happen.

Detecting and removing a keylogger/malicious code is not the issue if the assumption is true. If an attacker is able get a keylogger running on the system during install you have larger problems that the detection and removal will not solve.

Explaining your situation better would help, checking your keyboard is fully functional, detected & working as you expect is something I would try to figure out in your case.

@SLG2

My RAM is 8 GB (which I realize isn’t much)

Swap

This is starting point in detecting, finding and removing a keylogger.

[SLG2]

I agree that the presence of a keylogger is a sign of a larger problem.

If I do detect a keylogger, then I plan to do a fresh install.

I was able to improve my system performance by decreasing my swappiness from 60 to 10, based on instructions that I found on this forum.

But I’m not clear on what swap has to do with keyloggers. In fact, I’m not entirely clear on what swap is.

[Hanzel]

I’m not sure what the problem is you want help with.

There is no information on the type of keyboard, no info on what sort of machine the issues occur on and no logs to help identify issues. Please read the linked post from post #3.

[TriMoon]

@SLG2

If I do detect a keylogger, then I plan to do a fresh install.

@SLG2

But I’m not clear on what swap has to do with keyloggers. In fact, I’m not entirely clear on what swap is.

If you provide the required info as asked THEN people might try to help you, otherwise have a nice day, this is not a social chat channel…

[BG405]

It’s not that unusual to experience some slowdown when installing or upgrading packages, especially during the latter parts of a system upgrade.

I’d very much doubt there’s a keylogger but if in doubt, check the link at the bottom of Hanzel’s first reply (post 5).

[AlexBoldt]

Just beeing curious…
Why the hack do you think you got an keylogger, cause of a laggy system response while doing a fresh install?
If you wiped the disk and used an official manjaro-iso, where should the keyloffer come from?
…and if so, as @zbe mentioned, it would be the worst programmed keylogger I’ve ever heard of…

[SLG2]

It wasn’t just the laggy install. It was also odd keyboard behaviour, such as keyboard notifications that didn’t jibe with my keyboard settings, and typing into my keyboard but not getting output. I’ve done numerous fresh installs, but this odd keyboard behaviour and lagginess didn’t happen the other times.

I usually install Manjaro while disconnected from the Internet, but for this install, I happened to be connected to a VPN server in Israel, which is the source of much spyware.

[cscs]

@SLG2

VPN server in Israel, which is the source of much spyware

A VPN you connect to is the source of spyware?
Maybe you shouldnt use that vpn then …

[TriMoon]

They should make laws that forbid individuals like this to use a computer…