Developed in conjunction with PMC Ciphers and CyProtect, respectively,
encryption and Internet security specialists, the as-yet unnamed
system works by using a triple-interlacing display technology that
"flashes" a virtual keyboard onto the PC screen at very high speeds.

Because the screen display writing speed is effectively intermittent -
by is treated as persistent by the human eye - any attempts to screen-
scrape or similarly grab a copy of the screen by Trojan Horse malware
will, it is claimed, only produce the basic "skin" of the virtual
keyboard, without the all-important overlay keypad.

According to CB Roellgen, chief technology officer of PMC Ciphers and
the originator of the Turbocrypt disk encryption system - on which the
Trojan-proof dialog software is based - the technology has been tested
on a Windows PC infected with several Trojans but, thanks to the
virtual display system, which is driven by an encrypted section of the
PC's hard disk, screen grabs are impossible.

PMC Ciphers says that most Trojans use under one per cent of a PC's
processing power in order to stay "under the radar" of even the most
innovative IT security software.

Even on one of the most powerful dual-core Intel-driven PCs available
on the market at the moment, the firm says that a Trojan would have to
use around 15 per cent of the powerful PC's processing power to even
begin to be capable of scraping the virtual display screen, assuming
that the hackers had the necessary source code of the program.

As each character is entered on the virtual on-screen keyboard, the
screen interlacing environment - which draws on three sets of discrete
encryption and display programs - changes to a new "keyboard."

This means that, even if hackers were able to deduce the program code
generating the virual keyboard at one particular point in time, as
each password character is entered, the program code will have rotated
to a new ensemble.

All three firms are sufficiently confident in their technology to
offer a free beta test version of the software for Windows XP, Vista
32 and Vista 64-bit systems:

http://downloads.turbocrypt.com