Door: Urnsumcm , 22:56:42 Roll out prick!!!!!, nokia_x2-01_wifi_application.

We first covered breaking the commodity 27MHz radios used in wireless keyboards, mice, and presenters when [Luis Miras]. Since then, the people at Dreamlab have managed to crack the encryption on Microsoft’s Wireless Optical Desktop 1000 and 2000 products (and possibly more). Analyzing the protocol they found out that meta keys like shift and ALT are transmitted in cleartext. The “encryption” used on each regular keystroke involves XORing the key against a random one byte value determined during the initial sync with the receiver. So, if you sniff the handshake, you can decrypt the keystrokes. You really don’t have to though; there are only 256 possible encryption keys. Using a dictionary file you can check all possible keys and determine the correct one after only receiving 20-50 keystrokes.

Professional english in use ict reshebnik. Their shows them sniffing keystrokes from three different keyboards at the same time. Someone could potentially build a wireless keylogger that picks up every keystrokes from every keyboard in an office.

You can read more about the attack in the (pdf). [via ] digg_url = ‘;; • • • • Posted in Tagged,,,,, Post navigation. Unsurprising, but nice work and cool demo obviously this could be fixed with better encryption but in most cases why even bother??

Just use a damn wire, its not the end of the world. You have to be close enough to read the screen anyways i hate it when “tech journalists” and the like keep preaching about *everything* going wireless–they just don’t get it. Wireless is not *better* than wired, it is simply a different method, with its own pros and cons and shrinking micro-controllers, RF modules, and batteries will not soon make up for the inherent higher security risk, lower availability, and lower bandwidth you get when using wireless over a direct, wired link. I was wondering how wireless mice worked too. I have a Microsoft Wireless Optical Notebook Mouse 4000 and wondered what kind of frequency or protocol it used to connect to its USB adapter. I really think wireless keyboards are stupidwith a few exceptions. The only place I would really use one is in the living roomwhere you put the PC display on the TV and use the wireless mouse/keyboard from the couch.

Your average desktop doesn’t need (and shouldn’t have) wireless peripherals (even mice) because it’s just a waste of batteries. For laptop PC’s, wireless MICE are nice, because they’re small and portable, don’t have to worry about a mess of cords on your lap. But since laptops have keyboards built in, there’s no need for a wireless keyboard there either.

Something that quite a few people seem to be missing is that RF signals are easy to build really sensitive antennas for. Want to know the real danger of wireless keyboards? Imagine someone with an antenna pointed at a big office building. They could, literally, read every single keystroke, all day, every day, completely passively and untraceably.

Directional antennas have given un-amplified WiFi communication up to 125 miles ( ) granted, the signals from wireless keyboards are weaker, but we’re not talking only-next-door-cubicle range here. I’m only surprised it’s taken this long. I’m sure this isn’t the first, but come on. If someone actually noticed it as a possible security hole, it’d likely have been cracked a long time ago.

On a side note, I wonder why there are soooo many spelling errors in the PDF strange. Not surprised at all–what i am surprised at is that it took so long for someone to bother to try breaking it. I would have tried if I didn’t think someone else already did it. What would be more interesting is cracking the encryption mode on some of the logitech keyboards–my old one had a mode where you’d press a special combination and then type a code displayed on the screen in the keyboard.

To be honest, I eventually didn’t bother doing it and hoped that no one would bother intercepting my keyboard traffic–it was too unreliable, and ran down the batteries too much. I have a wired keyboard now. I use one occasionally too, even though I know the thing is horribly unsecure. I cracked open the receiver for mine and was disappointed to find a pitiful ~1/32 wavelength antenna in it.

I replaced it with a 1/4 (or was it 1/8?) wave antenna and saw a vast improvement: It used to not work if the receiver was behind a glass of water; after the mod it worked outside my house. Could they not just pad the data or something?