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Serge Ballesta
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Virtual keyboards are commonly used in banking sites because they have (at least) two neat pros:

  • they protect the password from naive keyloggers
  • they prevent the user to store the password in a file

But they do have cons:

  • specialized keyloggers can still spy the passwords (see @schroeder's answer for a more in depth explaination)
  • then prevent usage of complex passwords (12 to 20 random characters) stored in a decent password manager like keypass

As far as I am concerned, I do not like them because of that. But I must admit that they may add some security for non security aware users. The problem with them is that as they require a rather weak password (at most 6 to 8 digits), the bank could be blamed in case of compromission.

With standard passwords, users can choose a strong password (and are advised to do so). So if they do not, they are fully responsable in case of compromission and cannot blame the bank.

Serge Ballesta
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