Form Grabber

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What Does Form Grabber Mean?

A form grabber is a type of malware that captures private information, like usernames and passwords, directly from a Web browser form or page. It gains access to a victim’s computer much like a Trojan horse or even a Web browser add-on or toolbar. Once it runs on an infected machine, the form grabber records information entered into the form based on the form creator’s specifications. The form data is then stored and later transmitted to a specific server.

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Techopedia Explains Form Grabber

Form grabbing is an evolved and advanced method for capturing Web form data from various Web browsers. It is different from a key logger in that it provides a cleaner and better captured data structure.

Some form grabbers intercept and copy the data sent by the submit application programming interface (API) before it goes to the Internet. A form grabber’s typical target is a user’s Internet banking information, as often, a banking site’s login requirements are more varied and structured. The information grabbed may be used immediately for banking crimes and fraud or sold to other criminal parties. Internet banking crimeware is one of the fastest growing types of malware threatening every form of operating system (OS) and Web browser.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.