The Corsair K100 Keyboard Has A Ghost In The Machine

How Can A Macro Recorder Be Like A Keylogger?

A limited number of Corsair K100 users have encountered a rather worrying problem, where the keyboard suddenly starts outputting text without any input from them.  The text seems to have be comprised of characters and sentences which the users had previously entered, which in one case a user claims it contains text from a sensitive email.  Thankfully we can rule out poltergeists as none of the users reported actual keys moving on their own, only that text starting appearing without their participation.

Many years ago there were similar reports of this behaviour on some Logitech keyboards, which were eventually ascribed to a bug in the macro recorder functionality of the keyboard.  Corsair is suggesting it could be a similar issue here, and pushed out a fix they believe will fix it.  This does raise the question of how much you should trust a keyboard with comprehensive macro recording.  A keyboard that can record a half dozen strokes won’t get you into much trouble, but one that can record entire paragraphs worth of actions could be a problem.

We do only have a bit of information from a forum thread, so it is not impossible that the problems described could be somewhat exaggerated.  Unfortunately, one user describes this happening on their Corsair K100 after “factory resets and clearing the keyboard’s memory”, while others did see the patch, or a reset by unplugging the keyboard and then holding down Esc for five seconds while plugging it in.

This is specific to the Corsair K100 RGB and not the Air model; we will keep an ear open for any additional reports.