PSA: Stay away from wireless keyboards (beehaw.org)

submitted 1 year ago by black_mouflon@beehaw.org to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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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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[-] RovingFox@infosec.pub 6 points 1 year ago

All my passwords are random characters and I just copy/paste out of bitwarden. Can't leak that with a wireless keyboard.

[-] Valmond@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

Does that work for logging in?

[-] RovingFox@infosec.pub 1 points 1 year ago

I only log in on my own devices. On devices that I don't own, I change the password afterwards.

[-] pjhenry1216@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

I think they mean logging into the device itself. Like, if you have a computer at work with a work login, etc.

[-] RovingFox@infosec.pub 1 points 1 year ago

Fair enough, that is a bit complicated. Thank you for clarification.

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this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023

56 points (77.5% liked)

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