Security on wireless mouse and keyboard

Solution 1:

Wireless keyboards should be considered insecure unless they specifically state they use channel encryption.

Do a google search for 'keykeriki' - it's a sniffing tool for wireless keyboards.

eg: http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/wireless-keyboard-vulnerability

Solution 2:

Some manufacturers use AES encryption for selected or all keyboards that communicate with custom USB radio receiver, or implement Bluetooth which has its own security stack. Others only XOR data with certain value (e.g. MAC address) which is more of an obfuscation than encryption.

Here is an explanation from security researcher how he managed to capture communication of Microsoft Comfort Desktop 5000 http://travisgoodspeed.blogspot.com/2011/02/promiscuity-is-nrf24l01s-duty.html

When it comes to wireless mice - many manufacturers don't use encryption (excluding Bluetooth devices) - I guess they assume that information about right/left key presses and screen coordinates is not confidential.