Your Wireless Mouse Could Be A Security Risk

These days with everything being connected, the concern over security has risen as well. For example the FBI has recently warned about how connected cars becoming increasingly vulnerable to attacks, but here’s something that you probably did not think about: your wireless mouse, which according to researchers could also present itself as a liability.

According to a report from Reuters, they cite a report from a cyber security startup called Bastille in which the researchers found that wireless mice made by the likes of HP, Dell, Lenovo, and Amazon could be security risks as they do not take advantage of encryption, meaning that the seemingly innocent-looking wireless mouse could actually be a way for hackers to break into your computer.

Marc Newlin who is one of the researchers at Bastille, “That makes it possible for the attacker to send unencrypted traffic to the dongle pretending to be a keyboard and have it result as keystrokes on your computer. This would be the same as if the attacker was sitting at your computer typing on the computer.”

The good news is that this only works for WiFi-based wireless mice, and that Bluetooth mice do not seem to be susceptible to the hack. Given that many mice are Bluetooth-based anyway, we guess it’s not a huge concern. Bastille adds that some of the larger companies with WiFi-based mice have since pushed out firmware updates to help prevent such hacks in the futurue.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Gadgets
Tags: Hack, Security