Beware the Haunted Cordless keyboard

dr. greenthumb writes "The norwegian newspaper Aftenposten reports about an incident where a computer suddenly seemed to develop a life of its own. A game which the user could not remember using that day suddenly appeared on the screen. When he went over to shut it off the screen displayed a message asking him if he "really wanted to delete this file?" His computer was receiving keystrokes from another computer (with the same type of wireless keyboard) 150 metres away! Check out the full story and a follow-up, where experts warns against using wireless keyboards." /me plans to destroy Hemos' sanity...

see why...

[intermodal]

not all supposedly convenient technologies are necessarily better or more convenient. I like having a cord on my mouse and keyboard because 1) i know it's connected and 2) i know another isn't. Wireless keyboards etc. have no less a security risk involved as would a wireless network. Imagine being logged on as root and having the guy on the floor above you type in rm -rf /. while you hit the bathroom. even if your door is locked, you're still screwed.

TV remotes do this too!

[Anonymous Coward]

I have the same trouble with my tv remote. After the wife goes to bed, it turns to the TV-MA flicks on Cinemax and then clicks back to TLC or something whenever she walks in.

Not quite as fun as VNC

[zulux]

VNC in an office environemnt is a lot of fun with all the Windows users that never notice the little VNC server icon in the 'systray' - right next to their Gator and Bonzi Buddy icons.

I've got the keystrokes down just right

[Ctrl]+[Esc] -> r -> notepad -> Do you want to live, human? -> [F4]

under a second. Leaves the poor things troubeled. Confused. Hungering for the sweet realse of alcohol or a shotgun.

Or just move the mouse subtely when they go to click on somthing.

Of course, don't forget to tell them that it could be Bill Gates fucking with their computer - he's mad that they diden't forward the Windows 95 Beta email. He really wanted to give them $1000 and he's pissed his knickers.

Latest hacking fad.

[Defender2000]

That's right, WarKeyboarding! Boost the signal of your keyboard, and drive around town attempting to control random computers. Not seeing a screen is kind of difficult, but that's only a minor obstacle. Also use a tuned receiver to listen to keystrokes from around town. Passwords galore!

Re:see why...

[kleinux]

That would suck to explain to the boss. I didn't see the hacker because I was in the bathroom!
On a side note, maybe now my roomate will stop suggesting that we go wireless. I think the stuff sucks mostly because of needing to by batteries for something as basic as a keyboard seems really off the wall to me.

Don't Wxorry about this.

[Anonymous Coward]

My Log?tec keyboard hask been working for the law#tst two years witout any hi19tch.

It wasn't me...

[DrFatal]

Finally I'll have a decent excuse why that webpage full of naked women was on the screen when my girlfriend walks into the computer room. "I swear honey, it wasn't me.."

Happens toH EmeY all the time

[Anonymous Coward]

I uLse a LogUitecZh wirEelRess and mYouse. It's beOen happUening Rso muKch laEteYly, I'vSe gotAten uRsed to iEt. ThoRse meddUlinLg kiEds! GooDd thiDng they cOan't tRype as fKast at me.

Wireless?!?

[natron 2.0]

Wireless keyboards don't work at all! I took the wire off my keyboard yesterday and the damn thing still does not work.

I have one of these keyboards

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never Classified: had For Your problems Eyes with it Only.

Re:see why...

[echophase]

Imagine a little cluster of computers running an instance of Counter Strike, you'd have an army all through the commands of a single keyboard. Kind of like Mr. Dubya Bush.
Forward men, we must kill the noobs!

150 meters? no problem.

[updog]

150 meters? that's cool... since i use inches and feet, i'm not affected.

One Question

[telstar]

"His computer was receiving keystrokes from another computer (with the same type of wireless keyboard) 150 metres away!"

• What's a meter?

Re:Not quite as fun as VNC

[Christianfreak]

And fortunatly there is even a Mac version of VNC, you should have seen the look on some of the graphic guys faces when their beloved Macs turned on them and told them to use PCs by order of Bill Gates at a web development company I worked at a few years ago :)

Re:Happens toH EmeY all the time

[jigma]

HEY LUZER YOUR KEYS ARE RULED DORK ...man, I though I was gonna get a password

Three words....

[sheWhoWalksWithToesL]

Nightvision infrared goggles.

Well...

[DAldredge]

How are things at NASA these days?

securing wireless technologies...

[_ph1ux_]

If only we could secure wireless technologies. Maybe we could have the signals travel in a secure method - maybe down some sort of tube. maybe the tube would have to have some sort of "antennae" - maybe it should be of some conductive material - like copper.

We should also make sure that these "tubes" are shielded in some way - with maybe a suple rubber coating.

Then the wireless signals could travel through this "tube" from the keyboard to the computer - thus rendering them safe from nasty hackers that may be listening.

Re:Latest hacking fad.

[sheWhoWalksWithToesL]

Ctrl + Alt +Del. Wait a few minutes.

Crtl + Alt + Del. Wait a few minutes.

Crtl + Alt + Del. Wait a few minutes.

Laugh maniacally. Repeat.

-SheWhoWalksWithToesLikeCobras

Re:Latest hacking fad.

[_ph1ux_]

Just drive around with a WarKeyboard in your trunk that just send out a very powerful ALT+F4 non-stop.

Re:Not quite as fun as VNC

[/dev/trash]

Graduate? Damn, with your skills, you couldmake 80k a year fixing idiots PC's.

Re:Not quite as fun as VNC

[zulux]

pretty simple to fire it up on the old @home network and suddenly finding myself on a password-less PC. I also ran notepad but wrote, "Put a damn password on your pcAnywhere!"

A frend of mine had @home - I spent a fun-filled evening attaching to pepoples printers and printing out porn, Jack Chick tracks [chick.com], Gynocology Doctor remonder notices for their 8am discharge examination, and a 'turn you fscking Windows sharing off' how-too's. Annoying and yet, informative.

Re:TV remotes do this too!

[Anonymous Coward]

That "last channel" function is pretty handy.

Just a little difficult to explain why watching "Secrets of the Third Reich" gave you a hardon.

Re:TV remotes do this too!

[LupusUF]

If you watch Friends, you will see the danger of this. If you wife is going to catch you jacking off...it had better be to porn...and not some shark attack show on the discovery channel.

Scary Story...

[Nanite]

And there, in the computers disk drive... WAS A HOOK!

Nanite

Re:One Question

[tunah]

For non-americans:

A meter is something that measures - eg water meter, odometer, thermometer. Commonly confused with metre which is the SI unit of distance.

For americans:

A meter is either something that measures (see above) or a weird unit of distance only used by scientists and geeks. It is commonly confused with a metre, which is a conspiracy by the europeans to make everything two thirds smaller. They don't need double garages, because their car fits in one!

Re:Not quite as fun as VNC

[modecx]

I can attest to the fun in the benevolent maleficence in messing with people's PCs. I took my home NAT box offline to do some work on it, and decided to hook up my laptop to raw ethernet over DSL in the meantime. I simply could not believe the ammount of computers that were wide open, with Admimistrator password left blank, and c:\ shared. Winders Messaging Service is also quite the source of entertainment.

Being the nice guy I am, I made up an instruction sheet detailing how to fix the problem, and printed it to whatever shared printers existed.

It's no wonder that 11 year olds are so able to DoS whatever they want. The truely scary thing is that one of the computers was property of my ISP.

Re:Not quite as fun as VNC

[Kashif Shaikh]

[Ctrl]+[Esc] -> r -> notepad -> Do you want to live, human? -> [F4]

under a second. Leaves the poor things troubeled. Confused. Hungering for the sweet realse of alcohol or a shotgun.

This reminds me of something, once I was using VNC to connect to my home's win98 machine. You see, my funny little brother was using the computer at the same time, and when he saw all this windows pop-up automatically and shut-down...he literally went nuts. Lo and behold, he thought the computer had a virus and shut the computer off right way.

Boy was I pissed when I lost my VNC connection; right about when I was ready to download "my stuff" queue on fridays.

Re:Latest hacking fad.

[isorox]

Ctrl + Alt +Del. Wait a few minutes.
Crtl + Alt + Del. Wait a few minutes.
Crtl + Alt + Del. Wait a few minutes.

And this differes from normal use how?

Re:Bluetooth is much better

[evilviper]

and many devices will simply not work unless the end user does.

Muwahahahahaha!!!

LUser: "My handheld called me an idiot then shut itself off."

Re:Forget that....

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually in US English, meter almost always means a device for measuring. For example, if someone told you to go 8 meters down, you'd drive your car eight parking meters in the direction that person was pointing. As for word "metre"-- well that looks like a typo.

In Related News

[Kaz Riprock]

Southern New Jersey police [slashdot.org] dispatchers were wondering why they were receiving requests for New England Patriots, Boston Bruins, and Boston Celtics statistics on their monitors....

Re:Keyboards vs RC racers

[tulare]

However, you're right about the interference - if two radios had the same frequency crystals in, many funny things were bound to happen.

No doubt. When I was little, we had a dog that apparently decided that my r/c cars were some strange version of cat she hadn't torn to shreds yet. Needless to say, we kept her in the back yard when we had our cars out.
Happens that, right after Christmas (or maybe Christmas afternoon, I can't remember) one of the neighbor kids shows up with his shiny new rc-10 (mine was somewhat more scarred - see above). Naturally, I ran inside and got my car out so that we could race. What a disaster - my car did this stuttery thing and ended up in a flowerbed, while my friends' brand-new rc-10 went off full-throttle up our driveway, completely out of control, and then zipped right under the gate and into the waiting fangs beyond. By the time we got the gate undone, it was too late. Yeah, we checked, and yeah, both of us were on the same freq. What a scene - I'll never forget it :)

Re:see why...

[Anonymous Coward]

They can just tie the wireless keyboard or mouse down with a small chain, problem solved :-)

Re:One Question

[Graabein]

> What's a meter?

You mean metre. It's a measuring unit used by NASA about half the time.

My laptop was haunted once, too...

[soccerisgod]

...when I was visiting a customer. We were working on something on my laptop, discussing changes to a website,
when suddendly the mouse started to move around horizontally. We stared at it in amazement for a while, then I
moved the mouse and it all stopped. My best guess is induction from a nearby power line, but I don't really know :)

Re:Latest hacking fad.

[Zakabog]

The difference - Laugh maniacally. Repeat.

Usually when you use windows it's -

Ctrl + Alt +Del. Wait a few minutes.
Crtl + Alt + Del. Wait a few minutes.
Crtl + Alt + Del. Wait a few minutes.
grab an axe, start laughing psychotically, scream "HERE'S JOHNNY!" and tear that piece of crap to shreads.

same problem with the PCjr a few years ago...

[call -151]

This issue is not brand-new, at least not to a lesser extent. The wireless keyboard on the PCjr [oldskool.org] from the mid 80s had line-of-sight IR connections that you could do all kinds of fun tricks with. I remember a few gems:

• Writing a 'burglar-alarm' program that sat there expecting the space bar to be pressed constantly. Then putting the keyboard across the way with a book sitting on the space bar. If anyone walked by and interrupted the beam, the alarm would go off. Fun to do across people's cube entryways. (Yes, I was writing software that was supposed to work on those things...)
  
• Normal TV remotes would interfere with the keyboard signal and cause the PCjr to beep annoyingly and not recognize commands. I have fond memories of taking a remote to computer stores and surreptitiously pointing it from my pocket at the PCjr when the salesman at Sears was demonstrating the wonders of the wireless keyboard to someone. (Yes, I was an Apple II/Mac partisan and actually thought there was some danger the PCjr was going to take over the world... How could I have known that it was going to be one of the most remarkable flops of all time? )
  
  

Knock knock

[Anonymous Coward]

Wake up Neo.
The Matrix has you.
Follow the white rabbit.

Reminds me...

[Pig Hogger]

One day, the TV started changing channels wildly. And we couldn't find the remote.

Turns out it fell between two of the couch cushions, which were depressing the "next channel" button...

Re:FCC wont let me be

[machine of god]

That means that if your device is hurting my ham radio operations on 146.880 MHz, then I sic [sic] the FCC on you, but if I interfere with you, I have primary user rights, so you're outta luck.

I really have nothing valuable to say. I just wanted to do the sic sic thing.