Posted on 07/26/2016 9:08:16 AM PDT by BenLurkin
You should be able to trust your wireless keyboard. And yet security researchers have been warning people to be suspicious of wireless computer accessories using sketchy radio protocols for years. Those warnings peaked five months ago, when hackers at the security firm Bastille found that millions of cheap keyboard and mouse dongles let hackers inject keystrokes onto your machine from hundreds of yards away. Now, in case you missed that message, the same researchers have extended their attack to millions more devicesand this time, they can not only inject keystrokes, but also read yours, too.
On Tuesday Bastilles research team revealed a new set of wireless keyboard attacks theyre calling Keysniffer. The technique, which theyre planning to detail at the Defcon hacker conference in two weeks, allows any hacker with a $12 radio device to intercept the connection between any of eight wireless keyboards and a computer from 250 feet away> Whats more, it gives the hacker the ability to both type keystrokes on the victim machine and silently record the targets typing.
The keyboards vulnerability, according to Bastilles chief research officer Ivan OSullivan, comes from the fact that they all transmit keystrokes entirely without encryption. The manufacturers only plan against attackers spoofing or eavesdropping on their devices communications is to depend on the obscurity of the radio protocols used. We were stunned, says OSullivan. We had no expectation that in 2016 these companies would be selling keyboards with no encryption.
(Excerpt) Read more at wired.com ...
I gave up wireless keyboards for home since they weren’t fast enough for what little games I played.
I gave up wireless keyboards for home since they weren’t fast enough for what little games I played.
I gave my HP wireless KBM to my mother. The mouse was overly basic, but the KB wasn't bad. I suppose I'll have to put the wired KB back. Maybe not. At least half her PC time is game playing, and the rest pretty innocuous surfing.
>I just key up 1,500 watts on 40 or 75 Meters on my ham rig into the fan dipole and watch the fun begin!<
I used to have a friend whose guitar amp would get hijacked by some yahoo a couple of streets over running a radio. It drove him crazy.
How do you permanently disable the wireless. My old viao had a button and you could actually turn it off. my new computers all have a software disable. and it is as secure IMHO as any software, not much.
I have done it on Windows 7 and 8, with instructions I cut/pasted from...FR! I will look for them later, have to get to a meeting right now. Permanent means the sneaky computer won’t reset itself somehow. I think I lost patience that time I overshot the delete key and accidentally activated the darn thing.
Used to key up a 4 watt Cobra 142GTL on a nine foot whip on my roof and take out TV's for a block or so. Those old CB's were great for that. Fortunately the move to Digital TV has eliminated that. Now it's cheap Chinese baby monitors, cheap computer speakers and other cheap/non-shielded devices that catch all kinds of interference.
The funny thing was, once the tower and antenna's went up I got blamed for every tiny bit of interference people were getting. In the overwhelming majority of cases, many of those complaints were for times I wasn't even home. LOL!!
This neighbor might have been running a CB as opposed to a ham rig. I remember my friend said he had a tall antenna in his yard, though.
BKMK
I have never understood the whole wireless keyboard thing.
If I am further from the screen than the cord will allow, I am too far away to see the screen.
OK, if I have a projector, maybe I could understand a wireless keyboard, but that is pretty specialized.
I don’t like having the cords on my desk, so wireless keyboard & mouse, WiDi and everything else I can make wireless I’m going to do. It’s a neatness thing I suppose.
Here ‘tis. (Sorry I can’t credit the freeper who wrote this, I didn’t capture that part.) The full nelson of uninstalling drivers, and the half if you’re not sure:
if you never ever plan to use wireless ever again, just uninstall the drivers:
Start->Control Panel->System->Hardware->Device Manager
Then simply find the wireless and right click to uninstall.
And if he ever decided to use the wireless again, he would need to install the drivers.
He could simple just go in and disable the network card. No need to remove the drivers
what exactly do i disable in the list of drivers though
ive disabled bluetooth, because thats wireless,
...an easier solution:
start >> network connections: then right click on the wireless connection and select “disable”
This should shut off the wireless card without removing drivers (the removal of which may cause future headaches)
Interesting, just replaced the key board on my new computer with a Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse. Also did the same on wife’s computer, her old HP wireless was vulnerable per the article, no mention of Logitech.
thank you very much!!
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