Logi Bolt kills off Mouse Jacking

In 2016, before Australia was beset with coronavirus and mouse plague problems, there was another mouse-related issue scaring the digital world.

Logitech MX Keys Combo for Business

In 2016, before Australia was beset with coronavirus and mouse plague problems, there was another mouse-related issue scaring the digital world. It plagued people’s minds at night.

It was the phenomenon of “MouseJacking”, the idea that a hacker equipped with a USB radio could take over your laptop from 100 metres away by intercepting the data stream between your wireless keyboard and mouse, and the computer dongle connected to it.

Worse, a hacker in a car park outside your office could scan laptops in the building for unprotected wireless keyboards and take them over, and type unsavoury commands when you left your desk for a few moments with your laptop unlocked. They could add malware and activate ransomware in your absence.

MouseJacking in particular loomed as a nightmare for accessories maker Logitech which produces wireless keyboards and mice in huge quantities, but they weren’t the only ones impacted. Reports at the time said Dell, Lenovo, HP and Microsoft wireless keyboards and mice also were susceptible.

While the MouseJack threat was patched at the time, the problem still potentially remains. You might work on your $3000 enterprise laptop at home using a cheap $20 wireless mouse and dongle you bought on eBay, oblivious to the threat it represents.

Go online this week, and if you are a hacker, you can pick up a long range USB radio dongle with antenna from Amazon for $89.99. There is an instructional video on YouTube that teaches you how to pair the radio with a $100 Raspberry PI computer and add MouseJacking software to enable it. Your career as a MouseJacker is under way.

Logi Bolt Dongle

After 2016, Logitech sought to make amends by releasing “unifying dongles” that got around MouseJacking, but in 2019, Zdnet published fresh claims of wireless keyboards being vulnerable. Hackers could recover the encryption keys used to scramble the traffic between a wireless keyboard and mouse, and apply them.

Five years on, and Logitech wants to end the MouseJacking saga for good. It has released a brand new wireless protocol for wireless keyboards, mice and other peripherals that it says not only puts an end to the threat, it also goes beyond the protections offered by modern protocols such as Bluetooth 5.0/Low Energy.

The new Logitech “Bolt” range currently comprises six products including an MX Keys Combo unit with a full-sized keyboard and large ergonomic mouse for business. All connect using the same Bolt wireless dongle that costs $24.95.

Logitech limits the number of ports you’ll need on your laptop or computer to one; you can connect up to six devices to one dongle wirelessly. Apart from a keyboard and mouse, you’ll laos be able to connect a camera, headset and other Bolt devices when they become available.

You can also connect the keyboard and mouse to regular Bluetooth devices such as a TV, phone and tablet.

Logitech B2B Education Partner Manager Ross Hewitt said the Bolt used proprietary Logitech security protocol in addition to Bluetooth 5 to attain the US Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) for secure facilities that are non-military: security level 4.

“Bolt is compliant with these extra levels of security requirements,” he says.

The Bolt dongle.

Bolt also sets out to be plug and play. You turn on the keyboard and mouse, plug in the dongle, and you’re away.

In practice when using a Mac I needed to also download the Logi Options app and pair the devices through them, to get the keys matching the functions of an Apple keyboard, such as CMD-C and CMD-V for copy and paste. Bolt works with Windows devices too.

While the link between the dongle and mouse worked well, I experienced a couple of occasions where the keyboard lost its connection to the dongle. I’ll give Logitech the benefit of the doubt here. I had been using the products with a prerelease version of the Logi Options software, so it’s early days.

You‘d expect more from a dedicated keyboard-mouse system than basic functionality, and Logitech doesn’t disappoint with special keys already dedicated to or assignable to taking a screenshot, muting the microphone during video meetings, enacting dictation, emojis, changing brightness and invoking a calculator. You can assign dedicated keys to your favourite apps.

The mouse has big scrollable buttons for both vertical and horizontal scrolling which I found really useful.

A couple of things: my big mouse is right handed; you’ll need to buy a separate “ambidextrous” mouse if you aren’t. The Bolt dongle has a USB-A connector. If your laptop‘s ports have USB-C, you’ll need a USB-A to USB-C connector which isn’t provided in the box. The keyboard/mouse still works with a connector.

In the end MouseJacking appeared more a threat than a reality. The quantum of victims appeared thin on the ground. Nevertheless a threat is a threat and Logitech appears to have solved the MouseJack blues from five years ago for good, as well as offer more security for linking your computer and laptop accessories.

Bolt will be available at the end of September. Logitech is still to release pricing.