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Show HN: Bluetooth USB Peripheral Relay – Bridge Bluetooth Devices to USB

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Re: Show HN: Bluetooth USB Peripheral Relay – Bridge Bluetooth Devices to USB

#61

Post by wongarsu »

prmoustache wrote: post #57
wongarsu wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Secure bluetooth requires manufacturers to get the cryptography right. Even big brands like Logitech have gotten that wrong in recent memory, allowing attackers both to decrypt what you type [1] and to inject keystrokes [2]. And these are long-lived devices, even if vulnerabilities get patched in newer devices there are still plenty of 5 year old or older mice and keyboards with outdated firmware floating around. Not…

Same with keyboards and mouses which use insecure usb radio receivers. This company policy doesn't really prevent that. The best way to correctly fight Shadow IT is to provide equipment and services so good nobody would even care using something else.

I'm always a proponent of just spending some money on your office equipment. Even a $90 mouse and $200 keyboard costs less than a tenth of a percent of salary of an average office worker, never mind developer (amortized over a very conservative 5 year lifespan). Give people the option to choose between 2-3 sanctioned models, throw in some vertical mice and split keyboard options and you can even brag about how much you care about your employees' health.

Some people will always want to bring their own equipment, but a lot of it is caused by penny pinching or lack of options

Re: Show HN: Bluetooth USB Peripheral Relay – Bridge Bluetooth Devices to USB

#62

Post by tiagod »

bongodongobob wrote: post #54
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #35

> This project was born out of a desire to help a friend who couldn't use his favorite Bluetooth mouse and keyboard due to Bluetooth being disabled on his work laptop. Protip: If their company's IT section is like the one at my old company, they are quite unlikely to like this solution, either. But it's very clever. Kudos.

No, it's just a USB device at that point. Unless they are against USB mice and keyboards, it's fine.

It's a USB device that types stuff sent through the air into the computer. For example, if the BT keyboard is vulnerable, you just opened a door for an attacker to remotely type things into the company laptop. I don't think it has the same risk profile as a wired keyboard

Re: Show HN: Bluetooth USB Peripheral Relay – Bridge Bluetooth Devices to USB

#63

Post by yencabulator »

threecheese wrote: post #43

A potential use case for this is using BT-only peripherals, like Apple Magic Trackpad/keyboard, with KVM/USB switches. Would this work? I’d buy one. I currently have to use Synergy to share peripherals between two MacBooks.

At least older models of Apple Magic Trackpad work over USB just fine. I have one plugged via USB to my monitor, which acts as a KVM.

Re: Show HN: Bluetooth USB Peripheral Relay – Bridge Bluetooth Devices to USB

#65

Post by fffrantz »

theblazehen wrote: post #37
bahaaador wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite, if your PC has a policy that disables Bluetooth, a BT dongle would not work either. That’s where this relay comes in—it bridges Bluetooth to USB, so you can still use your devices.

This would also work to allow you to use a BT keyboard / mouse in UEFI setup etc I believe

I think it should, yes. I'm going to try as soon as I can find my raspberry pi buried in the garage.

It should work anywhere a USB keyboard works, realistically.

Re: Show HN: Bluetooth USB Peripheral Relay – Bridge Bluetooth Devices to USB

#67

Post by atoav »

Arcanum-XIII wrote: post #44
a1o wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IT departments that are too restrictive will soon find that people have a parallel world executing in Excel sheets and using some external messaging app to keep the company operations running despite IT efforts to ensure it doesn't - I mean to ensure it is "secure"...

My CTO is quite adamant that he hates shadow IT. Especially those with mac, full of... well software used by those artsy employees. Or with strange software not validated by the IT. Well. Other departments ask for equipment, but only hear no back. Management product like Monday? No. Dedicated solution for jobs they don't understand? Hell no! It's tough to be part of this. I know security is hard. Budget limit stuff.…

As someone who has worked in IT support: The problem is that people using that shadow IT will come running when they produce real tangible damage, because they lose data or some totally ridculous workflow stops working and you now have to reverse engineer some undocumented database format to extract at least the most urgent data. I am not a fan of IT GESTAPO, and everything should be measured, butbif I learned one thing it is that people will do the dumbest, riskiest shit if left tontheir own devices.

Also: if you work with certain customer data a good way to not only loose your job, but a ton of money would be to e.g. put that data into your shadow IT that might be running on some servers somewhere. E.g. people constantly asked us to use Zoom "because it is free and works", but we were in the public sector and a contract with them that guaruantueed the privacy of our clients would have costed a significant fraction of our yearly IT budget — and we are required by law to have such a contract.

When you then ask those people if they want to part with that money suddenly nobody is so adamant anymore.

Re: Show HN: Bluetooth USB Peripheral Relay – Bridge Bluetooth Devices to USB

#68

Post by bahaaador »

abind wrote: post #64

Awesome! I was going to build something like this for myself for connecting peripherals behind a KVM. I gotta test how this works with the Magic Trackpad. IIUC Magic Trackpad does something non standard to achieve smooth scroll.

I would be interested to know too, be sure to let me know how it goes!

Re: Show HN: Bluetooth USB Peripheral Relay – Bridge Bluetooth Devices to USB

#70

Post by [deleted] »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #35

> This project was born out of a desire to help a friend who couldn't use his favorite Bluetooth mouse and keyboard due to Bluetooth being disabled on his work laptop. Protip: If their company's IT section is like the one at my old company, they are quite unlikely to like this solution, either. But it's very clever. Kudos.

[deleted]
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