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Comment by gruez | Hacker News Reader

> 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?

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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.

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