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Popular Wireless Keyboards From HP, Toshiba and Others Don't Use Encryption, Can Be Easily Snooped On (threatpost.com)
Reader msm1267 writes: Wireless keyboards made by eight different companies suffer from a vulnerability that can allow attackers to eavesdrop on keystrokes from up to 250 feet away, researchers warned Tuesday. If exploited, the vulnerability, dubbed KeySniffer, could let an attacker glean passwords, credit card numbers, security questions and answers -- essentially anything typed on a keyboard, in clear text. Keyboards manufactured by Hewlett-Packard, Toshiba, Kensington, Insignia, Radio Shack, Anker, General Electric, and EagleTec are affected, according to Marc Newlin, a researcher with Bastille Networks who discovered the vulnerability. Bastille gave the manufacturers of the keyboards 90 days to address the vulnerability, but most vendors failed to respond to their findings. Newlin said only Jasco Products, a company that manufactures the affected keyboard (GE 98614) for General Electric, responded and claimed it no longer manufactures wireless devices, like keyboards. As there doesn't appear to be a way to actually fix the vulnerability, it's likely the companies will eventually consider the devices end of life.
Use a wired keyboard.
I'm fairly sure that these rely on the "signal that can barely reach my couch let along outside my house" method of "security" :-)
I always assume wireless keyboard are cheap consumer products built by the lowest bidder and designed by people whose primary interest is getting a product out the door in advance of or for the next big release of whatever their company's actual product is.
Most wireless keyboards' performance reflects that. It doesn't surprise me in the slightest their security is similar.
I doubt they will withdraw these from the market. Odds are they will do the same thing the last time issues like this became public: pretend nothing is wrong and keep selling the devices to unsuspecting users.
to intercept my trolling on DotSlash. Dear God, what has this world come to...
Only APPS can app apps, NOT LUDDITE keyboards, so if you only app apps, then only apps will be apped!
Apps!
In 2001 Security - Logitech Wireless Mice & Keyboards Can Be Sniffed
In 2007 Wireless Keyboard "Encryption" Cracked
And In Feb 2016 Mousejack Attacks Exploit Wireless Keyboards and Mice
And I am sure there are plenty more stories on slashdot just on this subject
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
...use a laptop; it comes with a keyboard at no extra cost.
(what?)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
[Technology] that [doesn't use encryption] is [vunerable] to [some type of data sniffing tool]
Security researchers at firm [pick a company] have [discovered] a [flaw/bug/exploit] [enabling] the collection of [data...of which we will enumerate all types to drive the point home: passwords, logins, keystrokes, pin codes, secure access numbers, credit card information, birthdays, AC posts, or even missile launch codes!]
OMG facts!
Yes, there is. Simple encryption with a companion driver doing the decryption. It would take a fifty cent chip, and there's already a keyboard to enter your passcode.
copy and paste
Wireless trumpboards made by eight different companies suffer from a vulnerability that can allow attackers to eavesdrop on trumpstrokes from up to 250 feet away, researchers warned Tuesday. If exploited, the vulnerability, dubbed TrumpSniffer, could let an attacker glean passwords, credit card numbers, security questions and answers -- essentially anything typed on a trumpboard, in clear text. Trumpboards manufactured by Hewlett-Trump, Trumpiba, Trumpsington, Trumpsignia, Trump Shack, AnTrump, General Trump, and EagleTrump are affected, according to Marc Newtrump, a researcher with Bastille Networks who discovered the vulnerability. Bastille gave the manufacturers of the trumpboards 90 days to address the vulnerability, but most vendors failed to respond to their findings. Newtrump said only Trumpco Products, a company that manufactures the affected trumpboard (GE 98614) for General Trump, responded and claimed it no longer manufactures wireless devices, like trumpboards. As there doesn't appear to be a way to actually fix the vulnerability, it's likely the companies will eventually consider the devices end of life.
wireless snooping techniques confirmed: The limitations for household wireless services are strictly due to the antennas in use. Build a big/sensitive enough antenna or array of antennas and you can accurately recieve and decode most if not all of the signals, even if the consumer devices in question can't pick them up despite being much closer together.
Just because cheap electronics seem low range given the endpoints you have available doesn't mean they actually *ARE* low range for an adversary dedicated to snooping on their transmissions. That is the cornerstone of using enclosures meeting TEMPEST specifications. Anything less and a dedicated adversary can find a method to snoop (even if it is some weird EM leak from one slightly miswelded or corroded corner.) While you as an individual can probably get away with far less that a proper TEMPEST shielded room or enclosure, you should *NOT* assume any wireless device without known good encryption is secure for the transmission of anything that could compromise you or your computer's security. Because anything typed on wireless keyboard/mouse hardware COULD.
https://forums.logitech.com/t5/Keyboards-and-Keyboard-Mice/Wireless-keyboard-stream-encryption-scrambling-encoding/td-p/584316
TL;DR: Logitech devices using both bluetooth and the unifying receiver are encrypted by default. Glad I don't have to toss out a bunch of devices.
Keyboards from HP, Toshiba and Others Don't Use Encryption, Can Be Easily Pooped On
When you are about to type something sensitive, pull up the onscreen keyboard real quick, type your secret Info, and drop it back down against. I always assume that Bluetooth anything gets broadcasted in the clear (any security being so weak it might as well be anyway).
On a somewhat related note, I was taking the train through the mountains on my way to Southern California a couple months ago when I needed to make a phone call. imagine my surprise when I heard analog radio style interference on the line (cell service is entirely digital now, the old analog systems being phased out years ago like most analog broadcast TV), meaning analog radio links are still being used on parts of the main trunk lines of the phone system. Keep that in mind when you give out CC#'s by voice or touch tones.
With the right antennas, NASA routinely deciphers transmissions sent with a power comparable to a CB radio coming from three times the distance to Pluto.
Yes, there is.
No there isn't.
Simple encryption with a companion driver doing the decryption.
Nobody expects to install a driver to use a keyboard. So they will buy the unencrypted KB from a competitor that JUST WORKS.
It would take a fifty cent chip
Wireless keyboards are under $20 retail, about half that in bulk, and margins are thin. It is likely that the OEM isn't even making 50 cents per piece. Why should they incur that expense for near zero additional sales? Anyone that cares about security isn't using a wireless keyboard, encrypted or not.
I don't suspect that anyone ever thought that they did. Hey, my wired keyboard can be snooped on from up to a million feet above, with nothing more than a child's telescope. Good thing I'm not a target, because there's also a window nearby. Can you imagine typing on a laptop on a park bench? Martians with telescopes could see my slashdot password!
Or, they could have better things to do.
I'd much prefer to hear about the keyboards that did pass the test and encrypt transmissions. Logitech, easily as popular as Microsoft and more popular than ANY of the named brands, wasn't tested? Why not?
Popular Wireless Keyboards From HP, Toshiba and Others Don't Use Wire, Can Be Easily Snooped On
I know it's a popular joke, but it's absolutely real. If you are mildly concerned, wire beats crypto wireless, because you can implement crypto wrong a million ways, and implementing a wire wrong is not that common. Meanwhile, versus adversaries that can read the wire somehow, you'd want a wired crypto keyboard, which I'm not aware of existing.
Bad analogy, while spacecraft use low transmit power, they're in the GHz range and use dish antenna's to focus that small amount of power into a beam, and NASA has the "Big Ear" at this end, which is is what? 60ft dish?.
No amount of gain will sniff some weak Bluetooth signal in the concrete jungle of office blocks very far, it'll soon be gone below the high noise floor of any receiver in the crowded 2.4GHz band.
Chicken Band radio, 27MHz/477MHz, typically low gain omni directional antennas, or with Yagi's typically around 12dBi.
Still works after all these years, still secure from wireless snooping.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I know you can pair blue tooth devices, but are newer versions of blue tooth like 4.0 encrypted and protected against someone listening in?
Also does encryption reduce battery life on the keyboard? I stopped using 2.4Ghz wireless keyboards when someone in my house and I interfered with each others keyboards. Since then we have pretty much gone wired. But I would like a wireless keyboard for a PC connected to our TV.
I don't know. An array of dishes all pointed at a target from different angles and distances configured as a phase array, should permit you to focus on some extremely weak signals in a high noise environment. Similar principle to how you can single out a conversation in a stadium using an array of omnidirectional mics with phase compensation, but with high-gain antennas already pointed in the right direction. The phase compensation before combining the signals is the key.
I'm sure that a makeshift homebrew directional antenna could sniff these signals out in a suburban or office park area just fine.
Even in your high-rise case, the signal could be narrowed down to a small subset of all devices. Processing the sum of a few signals to pick out "words" shouldn't be too hard, either.
Not to mention, I said three times the distance to frigging PLUTO. Presumably, attackers could get within 100m of most targets. I don't think you realize how much easier that is.
I'm sure hillary will lead our tech sector to produce products that protect our privacy, security, and liberty.
Holy shit, my neighbor put up 123 different antennas directed at my rural home about two years ago. The three acre array seemed suspicious but I'm a trusting guy. Time to do away with my wireless keyboard.
Too bad Bluetooth's encryption is still so easy to break.
Also they have direct line of sight, which an attacker is very unlikely from the USB dongle, they have to look for reflections.
It's a lot of fun to use a wireless mouse on your cube neighbor. Just a few random mouse movements and clicks each day is enough to make them go insane.
This is a reason among others why I still use wired keyboard, mouse and earpieces.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
November 2002
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
January 2003
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
It transmits wirelessly into free air how could it not. The thing about it is, Windows already keystroke logs wired or not. So this story is a false sense of security and a sales pitch for wired keyboards for the paranoid.
The only time anybody will fucking wireless keystroke capture you is if you don't use Windows and it is the Government trying to sneak your codez. All faggot shit.
Just use a wired keyboard. If you need to block drones (in USA) put shirts folded in half on your keyboards and type under them. The drones do see through walls but only see skeletons of your body.
Ask me how I fucking know.
I sincerely have to wonder how practical such an exploit is. OK, for the sooper secrit spy set, not to mention bored teenagers, maybe yes, sometimes. However for typical hackers, this sounds like a really terrible idea.
Why hack one person, and need to get close to them? Why when you can hack millions over the internet, and from anywhere on the planet? It's the same reason why hacks involving RFID readers, cards and wallets are so rare in the wild. It's dangerous, inconvenient, and mostly not worth the trouble.
There were also those reports that you could hack a system by reading the RF emissions of monitors. It's the same dynamic. Such hacks potentially expose the hacker, they don't work at scale, and frankly they are just too much work for too little return.
So sure, encrypt the Bluetooth keyboards. Just don't think you went from totally insecure to totally secure by doing that. Your security in practical terms goes up by 0.0000000001%.
It seems that the cited article is touting a solution in search of a problem.
How many computers that process secure information have wireless keyboards? How many computers that process sensitive information and have wireless keyboards are within 250 feet of an area where a person can set up a surreptitious sniffer system? Yep, the keyboard issue is really a non issue. Especially as wireless keyboards, in reality, have a range that is less than three meters. My bright idea of hooking the laptop up to the big screen TV and using a wireless mouse and keyboard from the couch across the room turned into a study in lag and lost connection. The system worked great if you pulled up a char right in front of the TV but not from across the room.
Now, the real issue is why any company would use a Zigbee system for a home security installation. Surely no one with ulterior motives would hack a system designed to switch your lights on and off when it was used for a security installation. That sounds as secure as the old HSPA driven home security systems that only had four micro-switch settings for encryption. A $7.95 Radio Shack controller would let you switch it on and off and you only had four encryption settings to try for a brute force attack.
You have to admit, "Zigbee" has a buzzier feeling than the systems for home automation that have been around for decades. Anyone remember the infamous spamming by www.x10.com ?
NRRPT/RCT