We needed a new keyboard at Casa Silenus, so yesterday I picked up a wireless mouse/keyboard combo at Staples. Works fine, but it occured to me: Have I just compromised my security? Can someone now sit outside the house and log every keystroke and mouse click? Wireless=broadcast, of some sort. Am I worrying over nothing, or can the neighbor kid monitor my surfing now with $.36 worth of gear from Radio Shack?
Yes, theoretically.
Practically, it’s pretty unlikely. Most of these short-range devices will hardly broadcast across a room, let alone down the block.
There is some worry. Some of them have settable encryption keys. If they aren’t encrypted, they don’t have very much range, though. In practical terms, I suspect somebody would have to be in your house with you to log your keystrokes, or at least sitting just outside your window. If you have a yard, I doubt that intelligible signals make it off your property.
I know my cordless mouse starts mistracking if I try to move the base off my desk to a spot on top of the case, obscured by a corner of the desk.
I work for a defense contractor and wireless keyboards are prohibited for the very reason you state. It’s possible for someone nearby to intercept every keystroke. Now that’s in an office environment. In a home situation I’d not be worried at all. Well, maybe if I lived in an apartment complex.
Wireless mouse is OK because it only provides movement data. No way that it would be useful to someone not looking at your screen.
We used to have, and perhaps still do, computers that were Tempest certified. There apparently were cases, or maybe just fears, that someone nearby could pick up the video display data being sent to your monitor. Tempest
With a good directional antenna someone can listen in from much farther than the non directional antenna in your computer. Probably not across town but a few houses over easily.
Curious: what range should one be able to expect from a wireless mouse?
Low-power Bluetooth devices are supposed to go 10 meters. I tried this with a headphone and found that to be a pretty optimistic figure. 15-20 feet was about all I could get reliably.
If one was planning on making a career of eavesdropping, investing in a Yagi (or similar) directional antenna would increase this range substantially, but these are physically large devices.
The 27 MHz RF band used by many cordless mice and keyboards is only supposed to work at up to 6 feet. Mine works flawlessly with the base sitting on the other side of the desk from the mousepad, about 4 feet away. Another couple feet, and obscured by the desk, doesn’t cut it. Again, an exotic receiving device could increase the range, but there are limits. For these applications, you don’t need a lot of range. You’re just interested in not having to drag the cord around while operating the mouse.