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Comment by codetrotter | Hacker News Reader

First time I heard about Wireless USB was just the other day, in a video looking at a luggable computer from 2006.

Video is worth a watch although it also doesn’t give an answer for why Wireless USB actually disappeared.

I was wondering after watching that video, if it could be due to security concerns? Like, is the Wireless USB protocol encrypted? And if so, does it use sufficiently strong encryption?

I did find a document that talks a bit about Wireless USB encryption.

https://cdn.teledynelecroy.com/files/appnotes/wireless_usb_e...

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I actually saw that video, but I had heard of Wireless USB for awhile. My manager at my first job after dropping out of college the first time got it for his computer and he was super excited.

At least according to Wikipedia, it was encrypted.

There's "encrypted", and there's encrypted. WEP for wifi was encryption, but cracking it was so trivial that for some years it was practical to crack yourself access to wifi wherever you were on a casual whim.

Still, even if the encryption was very weak, wireless wifi sounds appealing to me, at least for my old trusty wired mouse. Somebody snooping on or spoofing my mouse seems like an academic threat.

> Somebody snooping on or spoofing my mouse seems like an academic threat.

You're not concerned that anyone within a 100 ft radius of you can inject arbitrary keystrokes/mouse movements to your PC?

No, definitely not. The intersection of people who would think to do that, have the skill for it, and the inclination to view me personally as their target is probably zero.

Not to mention that I don't think anyone but a few niche enthusiasts even have the hardware to do it even if they had the skills and inclination. Who's going to walk around with a 15 year old laptop brute-forcing wireless USB encryption, or find some obscure hub and do it on a modern laptop?

I'm not going to say the likelihood is "zero", but I am going to say it's so close to zero that it's really not worth even considering.

Might be possible to do with SDR rather than needing the original hardware. Not that this makes it super more likely.

Anyone within a 100 ft radius of my PC is in my house and could just come over and poke at the mouse.

Or in the apartment or condominium above or below you across any of a few floors, depending on shielding. For those not living in standalone houses.

That's somehow both a much less elaborate and significantly more invasive approach to pranking wfh coworkers.

> wfh coworkers

I usually call her my girlfriend, but I suppose that’s another way to refer to one’s significant other :p

I inadvertently pranked myself like this. For a while my laptop got super haunted, occasionally the cursor would jiggle slightly even when I wasn’t touching the mouse. Eventually I realised that the Bluetooth mouse in my bag which I’d totally forgotten about was getting bumped and turning on.

Imagine someone driving around neighborhoods with a laptop and a very good antenna.

1. Detect vulnerable networks in computers

2. Pretend to be a USB keyboard.

3. Trigger blind key combos that will visit a website, confirm downloading a file, execute that file, and "OK" privilege escalation prompts.

4. Move on to the next block or cul-de-sac, while the malware finishes unpacking and reporting home for further use.

That doesn't need wireless USB, we already have CVE-2023-45866 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38661182 for "bluetooth stack more than 6 months old"

Yeah, that has been a thing since the last millenium. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardriving

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