A startup cyber security based in San Francisco discovered that users of bluetooth mouse can be easily hacked. 

Bastille, a US company founded by Chris Rouland, is the only company that provides vulnerability assessment for the Internet of Things (IoT). This includes sweeping the wireless traffic for threats.

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Using only a cheap wireless dongle, an antenna, and a simple line of code, hackers can interfere with the air space and send information to the wireless chip connected to the computer being hacked. 

"They haven't encrypted the mouse traffic that makes it possible for the attacker to send unencrypted traffic to the dongle pretending to be a keyboard and have it result as keystrokes on your computer," said Marc Newlin, Bastille's security researcher. 

An experiment by two of the company's security researchers found out that they can hack into each other's computers within a radius of 180 meters. 

"The attacker can send the data to the dongle, pretend it's a mouse but say 'actually I'm a keyboard and please type these letters," Newlin added. 

"If we sent unencrypted keyboard strokes as if we were a morse, it started typing on the computer at 1000 words per minute," Rouland said. 

Rouland added that companies overlook a gaping hole in their security system. Although they encrypt their networks and websites, he said that that there are more to cyber traffic across the radio spectrum than those two that always receive the spotlight. 

"No one was looking at the air space. So I wanted to build this cyber x-ray vision to be able to see what was inside a corporation's air space versus what was just plugged into the wired network or what was on a Wifi hotspot," Rouland said.

Wireless mouse by HP, Lenovo, Amazon, and Dell are more susceptible to hackers. Fortunately, the hack can only work with wifi-powered mouse, not the widely used bluetooth mouse.

According to Rouland, hardware manufacturers are coming out to brainstorm solutions on this newfound vulnerability. 

Tagswireless mouse, hacking, wifi based mouse, Bastille, Marc Newlin, Chris Rouland, airspace, Internet of Things, IoT, cyberspace security, identity theft, bluetooth mouse, hacking hardware, hackers, hack victims