Zugg Software :: View topic

Posted: Wed Jan 26, 2005 10:40 pm

Here's a situation you probably don't see everyday...

I had gotten a new wireless keyboard/mouse for Christmas (the Logitech LX 700). I hooked it up to my game system downstairs and once I found the hidden XML file where all of the secret settings are stored, really feel in love with it.

(as an aside, the stupid SetPoint software that comes with Logitech's new keyboards and mice is pathetic. It doesn't let you redefine most of the keys on the keyboard, for example. It tries to auto-detect all of your media players and let you select from a popup list and then sets all of the media keys. Turns out there is a user.xml file in your Documents and Settings/Application Data/Logitech directory that you can edit manually and have a *lot* more control and redefine most any key. If I had time, I'd write my own program to let people better customize their Logitech keyboards. It's a shame that their programmers/managers seem more concerned about the "theme" of the SetPoint application and how pretty it is instead of caring about actual functionality.)

Anyway, I decided to go ahead and get one for my work system too. The key spacing was just slightly different than my current development machine, so it was hard to make my fingers type properly (at least, that's the justification ;) really I just want the media controls on my development machine too!). So, last week I bought a second keyboard. But the scroll wheel on the mouse has these buttons that activate when you move the scroll wheel left and right for horizontal scrolling, and the right-scroll button seemed to be broken (didn't click, didn't do anything). So, after getting it all hooked up I needed to return it.

Well, it was a lot more trouble to wire the power and ports on my Development system just because of the cabinet it is in...so I didn't really want to take it apart. On the other hand, my game system just sits on the floor, so it is a lot easier to work on. So, I returned the mouse and keyboard from my development system, but used the received/recharger and power adapter from my gaming system.

Yesterday I returned it and got a new one. Works great. I hooked up the new receiver/recharger to the game system, but didn't really have time to mess with the system at that time. I came up and ran through the Connect process to get the new mouse and keyboard working with the receiver up on my development system.

Then, for the last day or so I've been working on my development system just fine, programming, fixing web pages, etc.

Today, I went down to play on the game system and found all sorts of dialogs and popup windows on the screen. The last thing the system had done was play all of the movies that I had loaded onto disk for the Sci Fi convention this past weekend. There were a bunch of Windows Explorer boxes open in various subdirectories of this big "media" drive.

I noticed to my complete dismay that the media drive had 150GB of free space instead of the 17GB of free space it had this past weekend. Sure enough, most of the movies I had saved to disk were gone!!

Fortunately, I own all of the DVDs themselves. I had just put them on disk for the convience of playing them as one big long file during the convention so I didn't have to switch disks every couple of hours.

It took me a while to try and understand how this was possible. All I can think of is that the wireless receiver on the gaming system was picking up mouse and keyboard commands from the hardware upstairs on my development system. I didn't think their system was supposed to have that kind of range, but it's possible. So, while I was programming yesterday, I was also sending keystrokes and mouse messages to the gaming system. Who knows what kind of damage this did. I still need to investigate the system further to see what else is wrong with it now.

So, I continue to be plagued by bizarre computer problems. I just seemed to be cursed when it comes to computers sometimes. It never would have occured to me that something like this might happen, so this serves as a warning to anyone else that buys wireless gear...make sure to immediatly go through the Connect process so that each system gets on their own channel or else you might have some wierd interference like this. Especially in office situations.

Can you imagine controlling your fellow worker's computer from your own desk? I can think of all sorts of evil things that can be done with that.

Wizard Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 1551 Location: Australia

That deserves a kinda "LOL" response, though it's extremely lucky it didn't happen the other way round and you accidentally deleted all your source code while playing WoW!

You'd be surprised what range wireless devices can pull, of course the manufacturers say a much more conservative range to cover their butts but in practice you can usually get pretty decent range, especially if it's line-of-sight.

I haven't bought into this whole wireless keyboard+mouse thing yet, but I'm getting more and more tempted to get one for the TV's computer. When I buy/make a projector I definately will be gettinga wireless keyboard+mouse, but until then I dunno, cords are fine and you don't have to worry about batteries etc.

I do a lotta wireless networking, though, that stuff is 4 teh wIN!!

Posted: Thu Jan 27, 2005 7:17 pm

Interestingly enough, there was an article in the Dec (I think) issue of Wired about Blue Tooth sniping. Apparently, a guy in Britian had developed a way to use a laptop with a specially designed antenna to not only hack into Blue Tooth devices, but he'd also developed things to a point where he could hack into any blue tooth system within approximately 300 meters, whether or not they were in hidden mode. Apparently he went so far as to download a ministers calender and phonebook, that's when it became illegal to have blue tooth devices in the British Parliment.

Kind of along the same lines ;)

Scyren/Wijet

PS Haven't been around in awhile, good to see you're doing well Zugg :)

Site Admin Joined: 29 Sep 2000 Posts: 389 Location: USA

Yep, they are going to have to add some sort of encryption capability for this wireless stuff, just like they did for 802.11 networking. The wireless keyboard that I'm using is just RF (2.something Ghz) rather than Bluetooth, but there are already Bluetooth versions of these keyboards from Logitech and Microsoft on the market (more expensive though). So it's definitely going to be an issue.

As I said, imagine the havoc you could cause in an office environment by snooping everyones keyboard or remotely controlling it. I'm sure that big companies probably already have rules restricting the use of wireless equipment.