Researchers at cybersecurity company Bastille have discovered a vulnerability. they call “Keysniffer” that allows an attacker to record keystrokes from 250 feet away.

The issue is with those wireless keyboards that transmit to a PC using an unencrypted, radio-based communications protocol rather than a Bluetooth connection. These cheaper transceiver chips (and other non-Bluetooth chips), which operate in the 2.4GHz ISM radio band, don't recieve Bluetooth's security updates that could fix the problem.

The unencrypted transmissions mean that anyone within a 250-foot line-of-sight radius could grab your passwords, credit card details, and any other personal information you type using a cheap dongle bought online. Researchers say attackers could also inject their own keystrokes to install malware or perform other malicious acts on a victim's PC.

Bastille tested budget wireless keyboards from twelve different manufacturers and found eight of them sold products vulnerable to Keysniffer, including ones from Hewlett-Packard, Toshiba, and General Electric/Jasco. You can see the list of affected models here. The security firm noted that it only tested keyboards it had at hand, and other brands/models were likely to be vulnerable.