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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[-] Black_Gulaman@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Just another item to charge it or replace the battery.

Frankly speaking, I tend to use wired if I can. I'm just one of those unlucky folks where whenever I'm in a hurry or something's urgent. Things I use tend to be low on battery, ink, supply, gas, etcetera at that exact moment.

Either I'm unlucky or I have a tendency to forget to monitor things that need refilling.

this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023

56 points (77.5% liked)

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