Smiert Spionam (Смерть Шпионам)

Have you ever wanted to enter a password on a strange computer but been afraid of having it stolen by a keylogger? Well, maybe this utility can help.  It lets you enter text in a way that is extremely difficult for a standard keylogger to read (hence Smiert Spionam - 'Death to Spies'.  OK, it's not really death; I just like the name).

Click here to run the program (requires .NET framework 2.0 or later).

To enter your text, simply click the appropriate buttons with the mouse.  The text (or placeholder characters) will appear in the box at the bottom of the window.  If you make a mistake, use the backspace key (<-).

To insert your text you must drag and drop it.  The most common target is a text box, such as a password box in a web page.  Position the Smiert Spionam window so that you can see the drop target then click the Smiert Spionam text display box and drag and drop it onto the target (the mouse cursor will change to an arrow when you move it over an object that can accept the text).  Drag and drop, unlike the clipboard, can't be intercepted by typical spyware.

The other controls are:

  • Clear - clears the text display box.
  • Show/Hide Text - toggles between displaying the entered text and displaying password-style placeholders.  Showing text is not recommended - screen capture software could see what you have typed, which would defeat the whole purpose of the program.  (This is also why there is no visible highlight when you click a character button).
  • Move window after each click - randomly repositions the Smiert Spionam window each time you enter a character.  This is the ultimate paranoia option.  Theoretically, a keylogger could take a screenshot to determine the position of the Smiert Spionam window.  If it also captured the position of the mouse at each click then a hacker could determine which characters had been entered.  By moving the window after each click we make this analysis much more difficult.

One problem for me (and you) is that you shouldn't enter sensitive information into an application unless you trust it, but the whole point of Smiert Spionam is to help you to enter sensitive information.  If you don't trust me not to steal your passwords then don't run the program.  If you're feeling energetic you can check the code using .NET Reflector to verify that it doesn't do anything insidious.  Alternatively, you can build the program from the source code (if you like to do that sort of thing):

If you would like to try it out but don't have a textbox target to hand then here's one I prepared earlier (it's not a password-style display so don't put anything secret into it):

©2009 Carl Johansen