Sophos said:Here's an interesting piece of work being done by boffins at the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST).
Many of us are aware of the problem of spyware, designed to snoop upon our computers, and steal files and data.
One common weapon in spyware's arsenal is the ability to seize passwords by intercepting keypresses (known as keylogging) as users log into their email or access their online bank accounts.
Some banks have, of course, responded to this by producing virtual keyboards on their login pages which don't require you to type a password - but instead choose the correct sequence of letters and numbers with your mouse instead.
Of course - as is seemingly always the way with the cybercrime arms race - motivated malware writers responded to this defence, and developed more sophisticated spyware which took screenshots or even a mini-movie in order to grab passwords.
And that's what the Japanese researchers hope to have defeated with their new system. By having multiple cursors randomly moving across the screen, they hope it might make it nearly impossible for passwords to be captured by screen-capturing spyware or shoulder surfers.
