Install hidden hardware inside mouse

Chef Duane · Apr 22, 2025

It's probably easier to run a 'tech support' phone scam on a clueless person and ask them to pay with Walmart gift cards than it is to engineer a concealed mouse hack to get secure information. I mean, when's the last time you heard of a 'mouse based cyber attack' versus the last time you heard about some person getting taken via the 'tech support' scam? I suspect the latter happens much more often.

spapakons · Apr 23, 2025

Recently my doctor asked his bank for the IRIS payment system, so that his clients can pay him online without requiring a POS device to scan a credit card. Some scammer knew that and called him pretending to be from the bank and told him in order to complete the registration they needed his card details, including the PIN and the CCV number at the back! Of course he just hang up, but they were bold enough to call again! They were just lucky that a patient came and he didn't had the time to call the police!

Into_Oblivion1 · May 9, 2025

gunrunnerjohn said:
Actually, that's not true. I know my Logitech G305 updated it's firmware when I first installed it, so it's clearly possible to change the firmware as that was done by the Logitech software.

Could it be, that it only allowed verified Logitech firmware to be written to the mouse?

Into_Oblivion1 · May 9, 2025

Again:
Through good argumentation, I just want to make sure, that it can't happen to me / highly unlikely.
Why it would be difficult to do?
Would it be expensive?
Would it require special obtained skills?

I am not any high profile of the sorts. I just wants to make sure, that my backed up data on my air-gapped system can't be harmed, corrupted etc. in any way.
And that is why I ask these "silly" and "crazy" questions, to close another "method".

Thank you

spapakons · May 9, 2025

Into_Oblivion1 said:
Could it be, that it only allowed verified Logitech firmware to be written to the mouse?

As most utilities that upgrade the firmware (aka BIOS in computers), it won't proceed if compatibility check fails, so to avoid to damage the mouse. The hacker has to create his own custom tool to upload malicious code in the mouse instead of a valid firmware. Also he needs physical access to the mouse. If he connects remotely to your computer (another way to do it), there is no point doing it, since he can already control the computer from the same remote connection. So it is VERY unlikely that anyone would upload malicious code to a mouse in order to hack your computer.

spapakons · May 9, 2025

Into_Oblivion1 said:
Again:
Through good argumentation, I just want to make sure, that it can't happen to me / highly unlikely.
Why it would be difficult to do?
Would it be expensive?
Would it require special obtained skills?

I am not any high profile of the sorts. I just wants to make sure, that my backed up data on my air-gapped system can't be harmed, corrupted etc. in any way.
And that is why I ask these "silly" and "crazy" questions, to close another "method".

Thank you

As said before, it is extremely unlikely without physical access to the device and if he connects remotely to the computer there is no point doing it, he can already control your computer. You cannot and you don't need to do anything regarding the mouse, all you need is keep your antivirus updated and watch where you click. If unsure or just too lazy to read the whole message of a popup window the safest is to click on CANCEL or NO. For some websites that popup messages and won't let you choose NO, just close the tab or window. Don't bother and certainly DON'T click YES and DON'T type any codes or your smartphone number or anything else. Once I did that mistake, I typed my smartphone number thinking "what is the worse it would happen?" and I was receiving too many SMS with ads. I just ignored them of course, but then I discovered that I was charged for receiving them! I had to block their number to stop receiving them.

gunrunnerjohn · May 9, 2025

I agree that it's pretty unlikely that a hacker would go by the route of compromising the mouse, but it's certainly one of many possibilities. One benefit of infecting some peripheral device is less likelihood of the hack being discovered by normal malware scans. As for the difficulty of creating a software load that would pass compatibility checks, I doubt that's a major stumbling block for someone that's truly a skilled programmer. There are literally hundreds of attack points on a typical Windows computer installation, it's hard to totally plug them all.

After you manage to secure the system, there's still the loose nut on the keyboard that can respond to a phishing attack and thwart all your great malware protection.

spapakons · May 9, 2025

Remember the good old 56K modens? While I was already connected to the internet, I heard the line close and redialing. Thankfully it was an external serial modem, so I just switched it off and cancelled the unauthorised dial. In an internal PCI modem probably I wouldn't have noticed or even if I did, I would not able to stop it unless I press the reset button on the computer to restart it and lose whatever I was doing.

gunrunnerjohn · May 9, 2025

spapakons said:
Remember the good old 56K modens? While I was already connected to the internet, I heard the line close and redialing. Thankfully it was an external serial modem, so I just switched it off and cancelled the unauthorised dial. In an internal PCI modem probably I wouldn't have noticed or even if I did, I would not able to stop it unless I press the reset button on the computer to restart it and lose whatever I was doing.

You must be a youngster! I was using this modem in the 70's with my Intel 8080 computer and later with the Z80 upgrade. The good old AJ model was a staple at the time, 300 baud or die trying!

I worked my way up, first to the Hayes 1200 baud wired modem, then the blazing fast 9600 baud modem, 14,400, etc. It wasn't until around 2000 I got high speed Internet from Comcast, and even then it wasn't that fast. I believe it was 2010 when Verizon Fios came to our neighborhood, that was a red letter day! It was first at around 200MB speeds, but within a couple of years, they were offering gigabit.

Chef Duane · May 9, 2025

^ I remember those. Heck, my first printer was an ASR33 with a board you plugged into a slot on your MB. 'PR#0' and you print!!

OldNavy · May 9, 2025

If you're worried about spying hardware in your mouse you should probably not be on the internet, live in as faraday cage and not own a mobile phone.
There are so many ways you can be spied upon it isn't worth worrying about.

kelper · May 9, 2025

Who remembers that lovely warbling sound as the modem did its handshake? And if you got a good connection it would turn to a steady buzz!

spapakons · May 9, 2025

kelper said:
Who remembers that lovely warbling sound as the modem did its handshake? And if you got a good connection it would turn to a steady buzz!

I remember in Terminator 3 that the female Terminator was producing these modem sounds in order to connect to a database.

gunrunnerjohn · May 9, 2025

kelper said:
Who remembers that lovely warbling sound as the modem did its handshake? And if you got a good connection it would turn to a steady buzz!

Just watch Wargames, they had it.

However, I heard it hundreds (thousands?) of times, so I remember it well!

spapakons · May 9, 2025

gunrunnerjohn said:
Just watch Wargames, they had it. However, I heard it hundreds (thousands?) of times, so I remember it well!

It was similar to the Commodore 64 (and other 8-bit computers) loading a game from tape. I remember waiting too many minutes to play a game. Thankfully there was also a 5.25" floppy disk drive loading significantly faster.

kelper · May 9, 2025

On my Dragon 32, I remember downloading games from the BBC as audio on a tape recorder and the computer could input it later. It took hours! The software could adapt to run on many different types of home computers.

spapakons · May 9, 2025

There were also small vinyl discs called flexi discs that contained computer programs encoded in audio form, similarly to how they were recorded on tape. You would connect your turn table to a cassette recorder and make a copy. Then play the tape at the computer to load the game or program. They were distributed with computer magazines (unfortunately not here in Greece).

Flexi disc - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

retiredat44 · May 9, 2025

gunrunnerjohn said:
You must be a youngster! I was using this modem in the 70's with my Intel 8080 computer and later with the Z80 upgrade. The good old AJ model was a staple at the time, 300 baud or die trying! I worked my way up, first to the Hayes 1200 baud wired modem, then the blazing fast 9600 baud modem, 14,400, etc. It wasn't until around 2000 I got high speed Internet from Comcast, and even then it wasn't that fast. I believe it was 2010 when Verizon Fios came to our neighborhood, that was a red letter day! It was first at around 200MB speeds, but within a couple of years, they were offering gigabit.

View attachment 133587

rocking the net with 300 baud! LOL

spapakons · May 9, 2025

retiredat44 said:
rocking the net with 300 baud! LOL

Watching a streaming video 160x120 B/W (binary not grayscale) at 5fps without sound. Nope, even that would require more bandwidth. Probably with some compression you could do it using a 56K modem. Or just go and rent the movie on VHS and watch it in color with sound and much better quality.

gunrunnerjohn · May 9, 2025

retiredat44 said:
rocking the net with 300 baud! LOL

Yep, the only bright side was my computer ran MSDOS, and even a large program typically was only a few KB in size. The max memory for 8-bit computers in the 70's with the 8080/Z80 was 64KB, and many were running with 4K or 8K back then. Most programs I could download from the available sources in a few minutes. I have to say, I had some healthy phone bills some months, that was way before long distance was free!

We were also building our computers for the most part. I'm not talking about bolting a few parts together like "building a computer" is today. I'm talking about taking a 5 x 10 S-100 prototype board and wire-wrapping a ton of memory sockets to build your memory board! Ditto for the I/O boards. There was many hours sitting at your workbench building the boards, then you got to figure out why they didn't work right!

You could actually buy an S-100 processor board, so clearly that was the path of least resistance. Times have changed...

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