Can you get a virus from a keyboard?

I know this might sound like a stupid question. But say you have a keyboard and you do not know if someone did anything to it. Then you connect it to your laptop. Assuming its a wired keyboard, this is impossible right? But what if its a wireless keyboard? I ask this because i might be leaving my keyboard and don't know if it would get touched etc. Thus i dont want someone to put a virus on a keyboard and then when i connect it to my laptop, i get a virus.


I guess you can also say like could you get a virus if you buy a keyboard from someone like say if they were a hacker so to speak? Im pretty sure the answer is no but want to be sure. Im pretty sure no for wired and wireless... maybe?

 

Anything can be compromised wired or not if malice is directed towards you with enough social engineering to fill the gaps.

 

@Drew1 both wired and wireless keyboard can be compromised nowadays. I'd say wired are much easier to compromise (BadUSB) while wireless may well be insecure by design (allowing eavesdropping) but I never read about somebody modifying a wireless keyboard to contaminate a machine with a virus. These attacks are quite rare, however.

 

You being on the Internet makes you far more vulnerable to an attack than running a piece of malicious code that someone baked into the firmware of a piece of hardware. Not saying it can't happen, but the odds are extremely low.

 

Wear gloves while you disinfect the keyboard with Lysol, then wash your hands with antibacterial soap afterwards, and you should be good to go.

 

Off-course you can, it can harvest viruses from another computer under the keyboard keys and then infect your computer when you connect it wirelessly!

 

Okay example. I leave my keyboard unattended or give it to someone or lend it to someone. They then return it back to me. Could they put a virus on the keyboard where when i get the keyboard and connect it via usb to my laptop, that i can get a virus and/or keylogger or anything like this? I have heard of ppl who are hackers and get into people's laptops and then put a virus on it and once the other person gets the laptop back, anything they type in gets keylogged etc. Thus if i leave my keyboard at someones place, could they potentially do something like this?

 

@Drew1 yes they can. You should understand that such things are rarely done just for lulz; the malicious actor should have some strong motivation to pull this off on you.

 

Where are you using an external keyboard where someone with both the will and skill to do this could have direct physical access to your keyboard and/or computer while you are not watching? Do you loan your peripherals to people that hate you or cannot otherwise be trusted?

Any device that has digital storage capabilities could potentially be used this way, assuming the flash memory storage was large enough to accommodate the file(s).

Life is full of risks, but some are so unlikely and remote that it is not worth losing any sleep over it. If you're not keeping company with some pretty scary people, the chances of it happening are so close to zero that it would be difficult to measure.

 

Hmm very much doubt anybody would bother with a virus. Now a device that copies your keystrokes to steal your banking information or such. Bet that's been done. In fact I don't even think it would be that hard. Mobile phone circuit board running off the keyboards power should do it.

If you really believe it possible you could go n buy a new keyboard. They are cheap enough.

Edit. Thinking about it. I would not want the task of writing a keyboard virus unless it was a USB keyboard. The dedicated keyboard connector would be an almost impossible path.

 

Okay well if someone has access to your keyboard, they can put something inside it without you knowing? So you won't know unless you open the keyboard up physically? I will give a very good example. If you make orders using your credit card, if someone did something to your laptop, could they see everything you enter and then have your credit card info?


The other thing is this. Im sure you all heard of cryptocurrency right? I know if you download certain fake files, it could steal your crypto. So imagine someone had access to your laptop, then returned it back to you without you knowing it was accessed. They put a keylogger on your computer. Then when you check your account, they then have your accounts and could clean you out etc. So i ask this because if someone has your keyboard or access to it, could they do the same thing?

 

Well, stop pirating things, watching pr0n, and downloading from shady websites and your chances of contracting malicious software go down by several orders of magnitude.

 

Is this one of those hypothetical scares? You can extract data just from recording the micro-transistor hum of a CPU/GPU/SSD, and similarly from power source because you can interact some with a computer that way. I forgot what that was called, but its doable.

That would be a very target specific attack to get screwed over by a keyboard like that.

 

Theoretically, hypothetically, one could embed malware into the EEPROM controller of the keyboard, and when it's plugged in via USB, it could potentially unload onto the computer it's connected to. But this is all hypothetical, and if a bad actor has physical access to your devices, then your data is as good as compromised, regardless of the safety measures you've put in place.

In other words: don't give your keyboards to anyone; don't plug in any unknown USB devices into your computer.