Easier to see what people are typing…

Posted at 3:01 pm on Jul 17th, 2009 by Namelesswonder

I can think of all sorts of uses for this thing that have nothing to do with watching someone else’s keystrokes. this would get the keyboard pretty far away from the machine in a kiosk type situation, or some sorta remote control solution. purdy cool

Posted at 3:44 pm on Jul 17th, 2009 by Daley

There is a another version on the
Afrotech website:

http://www.afrotechmods.com/cheap/cuecat/cuecat.htm
http://servv89pn0aj.sn.sourcedns.com/~gbpprorg/mil/keystroke/

Posted at 4:31 pm on Jul 17th, 2009 by blah

This is neat. It has many cool legit uses, hardware hacking uses, and simple prank uses in addition to its obvious darker use.

In other words, its a tool, which is morally neutral.

Nonetheless, cue the indignant outrage at it existing/having been mentioned here in 3,2,1……

Posted at 7:26 pm on Jul 17th, 2009 by Stunmonkey

i’m very disappointed, i thought it was a keylogger for 2.4 ghz wireless keyboards, not a keystroke transmitter.

Maybe there’s a way to make one using this info, although i don’t know if they use some kind of encryption/channel coding.

Posted at 7:38 pm on Jul 17th, 2009 by g3n

cool… to watch some one try to show his mom that cooking recipe website and keep typing that nasty freaky porn site…. hilarious!
But at 150 foot distance as a remote keyboard, too many uses to mention. Wonder if it would work at capturing mouse data also?

Posted at 7:53 pm on Jul 17th, 2009 by Winston

It would be more interesting if you could get a device that Could work out what the keys being typed by the leakage of power from the cables of the keyboard, then it would be easier to hide it (you couldnt work out that the stapeler is stealing your data, but you can tell by looking at the cable that it’s being intercepted by the device (and what if the victim stumbles upon the password?))

Posted at 10:54 pm on Jul 17th, 2009 by Ad

interesting,
can be used to grab wireless xbox gamepad traffic?

this is one of biggest chimera that rest unsolved…

m.

Posted at 1:21 am on Jul 18th, 2009 by myspacee

it only does PS2 with the firmware. The firmware is binary only, and the driver is a windows generic. They also use an app with a protocol.

it’s best to use all surface mount components to keep the pcb geometry down, and it’ll still cost around $40 US whether you buy their kits or do it yourself. the typical soccer kid and/or trust fund baby can afford that.

the ideal design would be an asic with usb and bluetooth integrated with some on die flash for your code. such a surface mount chip would only be like $10 at the most and the circuit would need a few passive components. I’d only do it for USB as I rarely see PS/2 used anymore.

The reason I wouldn’t bother with this is because of the cost and it’s still too bulky. ps/2 isn’t too popular anymore either. people who are a real threat with this stuff would make a bus tap solution with my idea and have it inside the keyboard.

Posted at 4:02 am on Jul 18th, 2009 by tjhooker

I’m really struggling to see the legit use for this.
Remote keyboard @ a kiosk? Come on, do you have a telescope to see the screen or something?
Plus you’d still need to power the “remote” keyboard (and maybe a clock? I don’t know how PS/2 works)

And the PS/2 side is Tx only so you can’t do many pranks with it (unless the pranks involve password theft).

Still, good to see a (somewhat) open design, could be useful for others to build upon. Assuming they can work from the binary firmware files…

Posted at 7:01 am on Jul 18th, 2009 by Mephistopheles

@Mephistopheles: I was thinking the same thing. All the “legit” uses have consumer solutions that are ~2/5 the cost.

PS/2 does in fact use a clock, it’s always with the map controller in the keyboard casing. USB keyboards just do block transfers on to the south bridge. Both use interrupts though a single IC/map controller.

They must have good resources because I priced the project around $40 which is what their non-soldered kit costs.

I’ve seen custom ones that where used in industrial espionage. They where a super small PCB with just a asic and 4 passive surface mount components bus tapped in the keyboard casing with a trace style antenna. the chip basically retransmitted the USB data and sent what was in the buffer out on bluetooth. what’s interesting is it was bus power.

Posted at 7:59 am on Jul 18th, 2009 by TJHooker

Not needing rx if you have wifi dongle to work as rx.

Posted at 9:12 am on Jul 18th, 2009 by kabukicho2001

@g3n:

There is a wireless sniffer going to be available to build soon

http://hackaday.com/2009/06/04/keykeriki-wireless-keyboard-sniffer/

http://www.remote-exploit.org/Keykeriki.html

Posted at 11:24 am on Jul 18th, 2009 by will

@will: unless it’s changed it only supports 27mhz based units which only accounts for a small demographic mostly consisting of off brand cheap RF keyboards.

If you go look what’s on the market, the RF ones are a minority, and still range for low Mhz all the way up to a couple Ghz. The other two types are bluetooth and infrared.

That board it just a thrown together circuit proving an algorithm. people are going to buy it though and realize how useless it is without redesign shortly after.

one thing worth noting is a keylogger is for the most part useless without a good bootkit and/or economical feasible design; expect it to be found. Using it for the mentioned “legit” applications is silly considering they are 3x the cost of existing solutions in most cases.

There are high level of abstraction application processors out there that could by themselves make a wireless PS/2 USB hybrid keylogger with the addition of a few passive components for a fraction of the cost of all others.

Posted at 7:48 pm on Jul 18th, 2009 by TJHooker

27 Mhz? That’s where Citizen’s Band operates. Wonder if it’s right next to a highway if CB would interfere? “10-4 good buddy, I’ve got your password now”.

Posted at 9:55 am on Jul 27th, 2009 by meanmrmustard