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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[-] Zellith@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I don't use wireless because batteries suck to deal with. I learned that in my teens with a wireless headset, wireless mouse and wireless keyboard!

[-] vrojak@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago

I don't know how old you are, but I used to think the same thing in my teens, however nowadays wireless nice last pretty long on a single charge. Mine lasts about 3 months, and in endurance mode like half a year.

[-] mishimaenjoyer@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago

modern (bt) devices usually have a built in battery that can be recharged via cable (or use the cable to connect the device to it's computer), so that issue is off the table, at least for better devices.

this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023

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