PSA: Stay away from wireless keyboards
PSA: Stay away from wireless keyboards
I aways wondered if the communication channel between my wireless keyboard and the usb receiver-antena is secure. I never bother to reseach this. Today I figured out the practical way. I turned on my pc at work and I tried to type the first letter of my password. Nothing hapened. Then I started spamming that letter. Still nothing, until the person next to me said "my keyboard is typing all by itself". It turns out she has a wireless mouse with a seemigly identical receiver-antena usb.
The moral of the story. If it was so easy to almost leak my password unintentionally due to this flaw of wireless keyboard communication, imagine wad a bad actor can do intentionally. Why try to brute force, social engineer e.t.c. when your password can be stollen in transit from your keyboard to your pc.
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Shit my current computer only works with wireless keyboard...Although I guess I could get a regular one and use one of the USB ports. Good to know, thanks.
If the keyboard is connected via Bluetooth, it should be quite secure.
It's connected via wireless USB.
According to Wikipedia, wireless USB should be secure too: "The goal of the specification was to preserve the functional model of USB, based on intelligent hosts and behaviorally simple devices, while allowing it to operate in a wireless environment and keeping security on a par with the levels offered by traditional wired systems."
Phew. Thanks for doing the research and sharing the info