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How secure are wireless mice?

Is it possible to control a wireless mouse from a different computer?

Is it possible to know the mouse movements from a different computer?

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up vote 13 down vote accepted

From testing, I have demonstrated to clients that yes, both of these are possible. The machines are supposed to have a 1 to 1 relationship with the mouse, but for some types of mouse there aren't a lot of ID codes, so you can get overlap.

The same is true for some wireless keyboards.

Simplest solution: if you are worried at all, use wired devices

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Is this a relatively easy thing to do, something where it is possible in all cases, does not take much time etc? or is this more of a "well its possible in some cases with lots of time" type of thing? –  soandos Dec 8 '11 at 9:24
It was quite dependent on the types of devices we tested, some had an immediate problem because they used the same ID, others had no problem during testing, but we reckoned given enough time we could break them. The problem is that the link is unencrypted in most (possibly all) cases. –  Rory Alsop Dec 8 '11 at 9:28
But it is not like there are tools that are relatively easy to access that will be able to do this? –  soandos Dec 8 '11 at 9:43
no - I don't think so. It is quite a manual task. –  Rory Alsop Dec 8 '11 at 9:50
There are some wireless keyboards (and I assume mice) that do support encryption of traffic. Here's a Whitepaper on Logitech's encryption logitech.com/images/pdf/roem/… –  Dracs Dec 10 '11 at 18:19

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