Keysniffer: A Security Flaw That Allows Hackers To See Everything That Is Typed On Wireless Keyboards

in #hacking8 years ago (edited)


Your wireless keyboard may not be safe. A new breach discovery in wireless keyboards, called KeySniffer allows keyboards to be monitored, making every keystroke be displayed on the screen of the hacker.
The failure affects a large number of keyboards which use a communication protocol using radio waves instead of the conventional Bluetooth. There were 8 companies found using chips that do not use the Bluetooth. The problem is that these chips are cheaper, which makes them attractive to more affordable keyboards, but also do not receive the recent updates from Bluetooth, which ends up exposing the keyboard.
The security expert Marc Newlin, from Bastille company, managed by reverse engineering, realize that the information provided was not encrypted. This means that someone located a few hundred meters away from the victim can use an inexpensive device (between $ 30 and $ 40) which can be easily found on the Internet to monitor everything the victim types. This includes, of course, information such as number of credit cards, passwords and logins on social networks that allow you to discover the identity of the person spied, and other private information such as search that the person does on Google.
You can see his official video below:

Marc Newlin also recommends switching for a wired keyboard, or even a bluetooth keyboard for more security.