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.
Bluetooth data transmission is encrypted. Initialization typically happens only through the press of a physical button.
I assume you’re using wireless devices of the same manufacturer, that uses an alternative that is not Bluetooth, and has automatic pairing without a safeguard.
This is not about wireless primarily. Use a decent product and standard and you don’t have that issue.
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Thanks. For what kind of specs I should be looking when byuing a wireless product? What key words I should be looking for?
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I’ll probably going to update to wired. It has all of the advanteges except portability. The only reason I got that wireless keyboard was that I needed something small, chaeap and portable.
Hmm, do you want a keyboard with firmware updates that encrypts keybresses…
Or simply use USB?..
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Still using a PS/2 keyboard from like 2007. Checkmate.
My Wireless keyboard is a Keychron. It doesn’t have a dedicated adapter, it’ll connect to any device with Bluetooth capabilities. From what I’ve seen of how it works, is that it can store up to 3 device signatures to automatically connect to (you can choose which of the three is active). What I assume it’s storing is the MAC address which I thought is unique to the device.
All my passwords are random characters and I just copy/paste out of bitwarden. Can’t leak that with a wireless keyboard.
Does that work for logging in?
I only log in on my own devices. On devices that I don’t own, I change the password afterwards.
I think they mean logging into the device itself. Like, if you have a computer at work with a work login, etc.
Fair enough, that is a bit complicated. Thank you for clarification.
So what you’re saying is that the password to get all your passwords from the cloud is typed onto a wireless keyboard?
Lol my closest neighbor is half a mile away checkmate
Pay no attention to that unmarked van
Can-tenna yaggi omni bi-focal … satellite dish made into a bigass reflector collector. I’ll get you from well down the street.
do you have one with 2.4ghz receiver?
like one of the plug and connect; no pairing required ones?
yeah these are garbage…It was indeed a 2.4 Ghz one.
I guess being old fashioned and sticking with my model M has it’s advantages.
The guy sitting next to you hates you
It is also problematic that you can send keypresses to the other person, especially since she was only using the receiver for a mouse.
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!
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.
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.
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
Don’t use cheap ones with white label components. Sender and receiver having a shared key would resolve this.
thank you
