Can past keystrokes be retrieved? 1

[drewla]

I am embroiled in a dispute with Betfair, the online betting company. My statement shows me depositing a large sum of money to my betting account and making two large losing bets. I did have a bet on at least one of these events, but for a small fraction of the amount that is shown.

Does anyone know if It's possible to retrieve keystroke data retrospectively?

Thank you.

 

[2ffat]

Sorry, no. The cache is cleared due to several events including, reboot, typing more characters than the buffer can hold, etc. Unless you had a keylogger running it's probably gone.



James P. Cottingham
^{I'm number 1,229!
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[SamBones]

Even if you could retrieve it, it wouldn't help you. Any forensic evidence that you pull out of your own computer would be suspected of tampering. Any evidence you send them could have had entries deleted, or the events just might not have been logged, or you could have used another computer. You can't use key logs to prove you didn't do something.

Problem number two is that keyboard buffers don't timestamp entries, so even if you could get the things you typed, there's no way to prove when it was typed. A logger will timestamp when it got something, but trying to get it after the fact, there will be no timestamps.

BUT...

If they are handling financial transactions, they should be logging source IPs. Or, it you paid through some other company, such as PayPal, they should have logged where you were coming from when the transaction was made. If someone else was using your account, there should be some evidence that it came from another PC.

Unless they just used the PC that you did. Is there any chance someone has access to your PC and you just left something logged on?

Just some ideas. Hope it helps.

 

[drewla]

Thanks for the info guys.

The news is better today. Betfair have provided me with the log which shows that the 2 rogue transactions came from different IP addresses than the one always used by me. This is no proof that I didn't make the deposits and the bets but it adds some weight to my story, and to be fair to them they now seem convinced that I am telling the truth. It may be that there is some other information (e.g. that the bad IPs have come up time and again on fraudulent transactions) that they haven't revealed to me, but which adds credence to my story.

Anyway, thanks again, useful to know about the keylogging.

 

[BigRed1212]

Close that account and start a new one ASAP.

 

[BatFat]

Nope. This is illegally and programs which claim that they can retrieve keystrokes are junk.

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