From pandasecurity.com
For years we have written about malware, viruses and phishing on the Panda Security blog – but there are other ways to break into a computer. Here are three of the weirdest techniques we’ve heard of – and they really do work.
- Keyboard hijacking
There are many malware variants that infect computers, monitoring every button you press on your keyboard; they are called keyloggers. Some enterprising security researchers have discovered that with certain wireless keyboards they are able to bypass the computer completely.
According to their experiments, they were able to scan the radio signals passing between the keyboard and the computer – from 50 metres away. When they analysed the data it was found that many keyboards were sending that information in plain text – including passwords and payment details.
The good news is that most wireless keyboards now use Bluetooth which automatically encrypts keypress data making it almost impossible to intercept or read. However, if you are using an older 2.4Ghz wireless keyboard (they usually need a small dongle plugged into a USB port to work), you may need to consider replacing it.